Well folks, prepare for a long first “setting the context post” before we get to the juicy bits which involve tools and shit – but trust me, when we get into it there’s one heck of a story here – as well as some cool DIY and construction stuff to chew upon!
There is also a significant tale of woe and what I hope will be some salient advice for anybody who finds themselves in the situation that I did!
As mentioned, this will be a long intro to the site – but the story of the purchase of our little cottage is actually what has gotten me to this point where I feel that I can write stuff around basic construction, DIY and woodwork.
My son moved in with me when he was young.
At the time I lived in a little one bedroom flat in South West London – living the bachelor life and all of a sudden, I had two of us to protect, take care of and think about.
Don’t get me wrong – him choosing to live with me, made my life what it is. I have a purpose, deep pride and am blessed that I now get to see my now 20 year old son achieve so much each and every day.
However, after a period of time it became obvious that living in the flat together with me on the sofa and him in my bedroom just wasn’t sustainable. I quickly came to the conclusion that I needed to buy a place – and pronto!
“ You might be thinking – well, dude – why didn’t you just rent a bigger place?
That did cross my mind – but not for very long. At the time I was older and despite really wanting to own a home, up until that point my life for various reasons had precluded that from being a possibility. However my lad moving in came at a time where from a financial perspective I was in a position to buy something. Timing was also key as I was at an age where another year on I would have struggled to get a 25 year mortgage term – so buying was the only sensible option if I ever wanted to have my own front door so to speak.
So after us getting by in the flat 0 I set about my search for a place for us both to live – this started in the Feb of 2021 and I had set myself a target of 6 months for us to find something and move in – which was slightly ambitious in hindsight, but it was a goal none the less!
I’d sat down and talked to my son about what type of home we wanted – e.g. what specifically were a “hard no” and what we’d be prepared to compromise on.
Of course this didn’t quite go the way I had planned in my head as my son didn’t really have any compromise about him – I’ll give him his due, he knew what he wanted, but that didn’t match the budget I was working to. I had to tell him that unless he could find me a cash injection of about £2m then he was going to need to find some common ground with me! 😀
In the end – we settled on the following base non-negotiables:
- Had to be away from main roads (I had always lived on or near main roads, right up until I had moved into the flat which was set in a very quiet block and I had gotten used to not having constant traffic noise and the associated dirt and dust that living near main routes brings into your home).
- Had to be within a reasonable traveling distance on public transport for my son’s college (He didn’t drive at that point).
- Had to have two bedrooms (kind of obvious this one).
- Had to have a garden of a reasonable size (this was one of my lads conditions, I didn’t disagree – but the thought of having a large(ish) garden to attend to filled me with dread (well, it did at the time).
- Had to be in a low crime area (this was one of my on personal absolutes. I had grown up and lived as an adult in some of the roughest parts of South West London – and where I lived in the flat, whilst quite an affluent area still had some interesting ASB issues). I knew that I wasn’t going to find some Minority Report crime free haven – but somewhere where walking down the road wasn’t a 50/50 risk of being stabbed.This was very important again for me in relation to my son – who had only ever known places to live which were crime ridden cesspits full of unsavory people and a heavy proliferation of drug use amongst the young. I didn’t want that to be his life).
On the basis of above – off I set trying to find something that ticked all of the boxes above.
To cut a long story short, I think that I viewed around 10 properties all in all.
My favourite one (tongue firmly in cheek here) was a house which from the train station was a good 2 mile hike through fields and narrow wooded areas.
Half way through my hike (which did feel like a jungle at times), I came across the remnants of what appeared to be a murder crime scene (complete with cordon tape). Needless to say I moved on from that part of the walk very quickly and the end upshot was, when I finally got to the place (which, to be fair was stunning) – I declined to make an offer.
It also didn’t help that the estate agent – who was very clear on what my budget was told me that it was on the market for a value which was a good £100k more than what I had planned. So off I went back on the trek home, through the crime scene and over the fields.
Anyhow, during my viewings – I did stumble on one little place.
It was July of 2021 and I was getting frustrated. I had seen a lovely (looking) little cottage in Berkshire so arranged a viewing. The first thing that I noticed was that the walk from the train station to the place was 40 mins and you had to navigate some very narrow paths on what was a very busy main road – this was a big issue as I didn’t like the idea of my lad doing that journey in the dark (as there was very little street lighting due to it being in a very rural area) – but I thought to myself “I have come this far, lets at least go and view it).
Well, I have to admit I fell immediately in love with this cottage.
It was set way, way back from the road, located down an innocuous little alley way that you could easily miss if you weren’t paying attention. It was set on the corner of a field – which in itself spanned around 100 acres, all of which the master bedroom looked out over. Internally it looked immaculate (this, as I later found out, was purely cosmetic – but I will come onto this) and, during the 10 minute viewing I had (COVID controls at the time) all I could think about was – how can I make this work?
I spent the 40 min walk back to the station and subsequent hour back to the flat trying to figure out ways I could over come the journey to college for my lad. This continued into the evening though various Google searches and looking at maps – but sadly, to no avail. The journey was the journey and that was that.
So it was with a very heavy heart the following day I contacted the Agent and said that I wouldn’t be making an offer.
This meant that I had to plough on with my search – but, I just couldn’t find anything that I liked. I had that little cottage in the back of my mind all the time – and it didn’t help that each and every time that I logged onto one of the various property sites it would be there front and centre at the top of the search results. It was like it was taunting me!
It was now August 2021 and I just couldn’t get this little place out of my head. So I sat down with my son and explained the situation and asked him would he come with me for a viewing, The basis would be – if he felt that the journey was too much, I would let it go and move on.
I called up the Agent to see if it was still on the market (which it was) and booked for us to go and see it together.
He loved it, even though it had next to no garden – but sadly, the sticking point with him was his journey to college. So that was that.
Again with a heavy heart – we both set off on our trip back to London, but just as we were walking out of the village – I spotted a bus! I managed to get its route number and when we got home I looked it up.
Low and behold that particular route could get my son to a train station that would get him to college in under an hour – and the route ran from the entrance to the village!
I put an offer in which was accepted and after the various bits that go on in between the offer and completion – Dec 1st we moved in – so my 6 month target was out by 4 months, but that wasn’t too bad going.
This was the Shire on the day that we moved in:
Yeah, I get it – it looked a lot better in the Summer when I had viewed it – and it appeared that the previous owner decided from the moment I made the offer to the day I moved in do precisely nothing to maintain it – but I wish that was the worst that I could say about what came next.
With it being December the weather had turned much colder – and with that was the discovery of the first problems with the Shire:
- No heating of any significance.
- No insulation of any kind, anywhere. Yep, it was just single skin walls with nothing to insulate them, the floors (which were all laminate) or the loft (despite my survey saying that it had insulation).
There was absolutely nothing. - The main front door was a painfully thin, extremely bowed wood effort that could be opened with a credit card.
- The backdoor was a two part stable effort (top and bottom could open independently) – but again was fitted badly so very drafty.
- And the circle window (see pic above) wasn’t UPVC like the rest of the house – just a wooden frame wedged into place (no sealant).
Whilst the doors and the window were a problem – the biggest was the lack of heating. Basically the cottage had one 500watt heater in each room – with the downstairs living area also having an 8Kw log burner.
The space heaters were old and basically didn’t work – so my challenge was how do I heat a two bedroom cottage with a single log burner over 24 hours during winter – where the house has no insulation.
The answer to that question my friends is – I don’t and more to the point I can’t!
Using the heaters was a waste of money as they consumed energy – but didn’t heat (this was also right at the worst part of the energy crisis) and alternative space based heaters didn’t really cut the mustard either.
“ Fuck, I believe was the word that I used at the time.
It was, at this point about three weeks until Christmas and I had moved my son away from a warm, cost flat with working heating – to an ice box in the middle a field – fucking marvelous.
So it was this part of the adventure that would eventually set me on my way to what this site will be going forward – I had to get immersed in the world of how to use trades for what I couldn’t do – and then learn myself in areas that I could do.
I did a lot of research around what my options where around the heating and they turned out to be very limited. The cottage had no gas presentation – so that ruled out central heating and, due to the lack of insulation heat pumps were also not on the table.
Larger space heaters didn’t make sense – so, cutting a very long story short I settled on High Heat Retention (HHR) Storage heaters. I found a company online who not only could supply and install the heaters within a week – they also didn’t take my pants down and ram spiky crap up my arse financially – plus the lads who fitted these throughout were just all kinds of class.
So that was part one of the problems solved, I figured that running the storage heaters on an Economy 7 tariff combined with the log burner in the late evenings – I’d buy enough time to figure out what to do with the doors, window and overall insulation situation – I basically needed that first Christmas out of the way.
Being at this point about 2 weeks into home-ownership – what had I learned?
- Never buy a house / cottage during a Pandemic.
- Never view a property in the Summer and demand more than 10 minutes at a time!
- Surveys aren’t worth the paper they are written on – none of the initial issues I had found after moving in were picked up – and – as the next parts will explain missing elements from the survey meant my problems got worse!
- Shopping around companies, does yield better results – I had one company say they couldn’t fit the heating until the new year, one said they would do it for £10k and the one I settled on did the work for £3.5k and were with me within a few days!
To be continued …