We moved in July.  Goodbye old home of mod cons, our project there was completed.  Hello property of potential.  Or as Lil H says “the new house that is old”.  We’ve been busy, we’ve been doing, we’ve planning.  What I’ve not been doing is sharing it here which is what I wanted to do, what I am going to do.  So now I kind of have a catch up story to bring you up to speed … oh and some exciting news …

So what have we done, these are all “make do for now” maneuvers …

  1. As soon as we had the keys we painted lil H and Diva G’s bedrooms
  2. We stripped the paper peeling off the bathroom and painted the walls
  3. Made over the kitchen, painting all the cupboards & whole room
  4. We searched for an architect
  5. We found an architect

So how do you search for an architect?  Like everything in my life these days I headed to twitter a few tweets and a search on #architect and I had four great potential architects who  I have met up with over the last few months.  I met Raynes Architecture, Mark Burgess, DV8 Designs and Innex Design they were all lovely and made the decision very difficult!  Two things made the difference and helped our decision, the willingness to share and come away from an initial meeting and email rough thoughts, and also the opportunity to exchange my marketing skills in exchange for their architectural design expertise.

I’m every excited to be working with Innex Design and their sister businesses Innex Developments and House of Nostalgia.  This is a marathon not a sprint of a project and we’ve warmed up and have made our way to the starting line!

So the warm up, the warm up was …

  1. Sell finished house
  2. Buy a new house of potential (rent if necessary, wasn’t necessary!)
  3. Get rid of the ridiculous travelling and shifts Mr L’s job brought
  4. Find an architect
Now we’re at the starting line and the next bit looks like this…
  1. Redesign the house to maximise the potential we bought
  2. Work out how much its going to cost
  3. Work out if/how to phase the development
  4. Work out how to afford it

I have no clue about number four but I am working on the basis it isn’t a bridge I need to cross yet, money always works itself out, I can work it out, I have to!  There’s no deadline but we’re hoping to have a design pretty much there to go to planning with by the beginning of next year.  I’ll be sharing for your input, thoughts and feedback.  I’m going to start back at the beginning with what we have done so far and with the very initial scamps from Innex Design so who’s ready to knock down some walls with us?  Claire x