Wednesday February 6, 2008
It really helps, having a plan. The pace of life in the little brick house is picking up nicely, and so is my own rate of progress. I swear that, without any undue effort, I’ve lost some weight. I’ve certainly had to tighten my belt one notch to avoid embarassment. I’m not using the scales as an indictor this time, mostly because they seem to have got lost, or bust, in the last couple of moves. Instead, I’m concentrating on girth, overall body fat and well-being.
I’m still way, way over weight, though, and it’s a burden when I have to schlepp all this blubber any great distance. Or around IKEA.
It’s not clear yet if this was the last time for IKEA as part of this house doctoring process. It felt like it. Graham wanted a couple of extra pieces of display shelving along with some pictures and small decorative bits. He seems to have much if not all of the detail of the project sorted out in his head and it all comes together as he attends to each room in turn. We talk about it all constantly.
He says there’s about another two weeks to do before we can instruct agents, including his one and a half day final stint at the holiday camp for St Valentines. Once we’ve selected and signed up with a selling agent he’ll head down to Wales to visit with his mother for a couple of days or so.
And then it’ll be heads down to sit out the selling period. My instincts, contrary to all market indications, tell me that this could easily be a swift sale. There’s no telling, though, and it’s really a matter of the thing taking as long as it takes. Again.
We’ll have to wait for a firm offer before starting the search out on Cardigan Bay but we’ve both of us spent some time searching the Internet, looking at hundreds of houses. We’ve not established anything more than the sketchiest of parameters this time. We insist on the place being detached, with a garden, and with a garage and workshop. Economics will dictate the rest, including the precise situation–the closer you are to the cliffs the higher the price. There are about twenty to thirty miles of lovely countryside back from the coast however, so it’s not essential. Our last rural Welsh cottage was some miles from the sea, near Llandyssul, and was a delight.
As to house type, all we feel inclined to say is that we’d rather not have too many stairs. Graham, again, has a pretty clear image of the kind of house he’d like, based on his grandmother’s double-fronted three up and three down place, like nothing so much as the kind of house a child draws. You see them all over Wales.
Dream house?
We shall have to see. All I can say at this point in the game is that it really helps to have a plan. And a dream does no harm, either.
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