Buying a cottage which needs pretty much every cosmetic enhancement short of a tummy tuck and brow lift doing to it really makes you question where you are spending your money. Because the house will always just be a small starter home, we have agreed to be careful we don't overspend in changing the interiors to our taste so as to avoid the inevitable ceiling value - which for a two bedroom mid-terrace cottage will be so low I could bump my aching little head on it.
We've estimated that we could spend around 5k on the house on things including tins of paint, new lounge carpet, sprucing up the existing bathroom and kitchen, tiles and flooring, built in storage, landscaping the garden and a possible re-plaster job to the bedroom ceiling. There's also the potential of knocking down the existing flimsy porch structure and have a proper conservatory placed there, and opening this up to the kitchen and rear reception room. All of this should hopefully bring the value of the house up a peg or two in the next couple of years without costing us a disproportionate amount to achieve - which is why we ruled out a costly loft conversion jobby.
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| All in the name of... |
When I went over the Wedding spreadsheet I found that minus mine and Chris' parents' generous contributions and my existing savings/bonus cash deductions, we're gonna need to save up/find from down the back of the sofa around £4-5k.
When the amount that you're spending on what essentially is a party comes out at around the same as what it would cost to get your house into a good condition, you can't help but question your choices.
But luckily for us we really do want to get married this September. We've been engaged now for almost two years and despite never thinking we would buy a house within months of the wedding date, we're very glad to be home owners before we begin life as grown-ups and off the psycho landlord/crappy flat merry-go-round (excusing the cheery sounding irony of that metaphor).
My boss was in a similar position when she and her husband bought their home within a year of their wedding date, and remembers it being a stressful, chaotic and expensive year. But I am encouraged by the thought that like her, when we've had our lovely wedding day with all of our treasured friends and family around us, we can then enjoy being a married couple with a house to renovate together. And we will have all of the happy wedding day memories and beautiful photographs (post photo-shop as the night goes on) to cherish and put up around the house - so long as the walls don't fall down anytime soon.
