Who are the two people crazy enough to put their house on the market during a global pandemic? Us, that’s who.
We’d sort of considered moving house sooner than expected, to upsize from our 3-bed semi, but at first it was only talk and an appointment with a mortgage advisor. But these things always escalate faster than expected.
Our last home went on the market in March 2020. We sold it really quickly, within about 3 weeks, and got our final offer on the table the same evening Boris announced a full UK lockdown.
We’d also viewed a few houses. A bungalow in Chester that needed a huge amount of work and was up at auction and another 3-bed semi that needed lots of work, with potential to extend. But we both knew that there was no point in moving unless we were going to substantially upside.
I booked a viewing for the house but said to Jay that I wasn’t entirely convinced that it was right for us but that we should go and see it anyway. We viewed it and put an offer in half an hour later.
Five months later, after many delays due to COVID, we moved in and absolutely love it here!
Outside
The house is a 4-bedroom detached property in a small village located just outside of Chester city centre. We immediately got to work sprucing up the outside by painting the front door and then painting the metal garage door. Instant improvement!
The drive is block paved and in fairly good condition, despite needing a thorough jet wash.
Kitchen
We have big plans for the future that involve knocking the wall down between our kitchen diner and making a large family living space.
When we moved in, our kitchen has lovely red carpet tiles, orange wood units and some questionable wall tiles.
The kitchen had a facelift in December 2021, when we had to isolate for 10 days following a positive COVID-19 test. We used the time to do a complete budget kitchen makeover, the results of which you can see in the blog post!
The kitchen is at the back of the house and looks into the garden.
Living room
When we moved in, the living room was a giant cream box. It’s a long and narrow room, made to feel even narrower thanks to the large 80s fireplace that juts out into the room.
One of the first projects I did in this house was paint the terracotta hearth and mantel black. Then we planned a gorgeous wall mural for the wall on the right and painted the room in Farrow and Ball Peignoir.
Master Bedroom
Our master bedroom, much like the living room, was also a cream box. It has built in wardrobes that are a very slight pink colour, which is why I decided to paint this room in Shale Blue, by Valspar. We took it from this:
to this:
This means that I finally achieved my goal of having a navy blue and pink bedroom!
Home office
One of the big pulling points of this house was the home office. Stacked floor to ceiling with built-in bookcases, it’s absolutely perfect while I’ve been working from home every day.
But of course, I’m not one to go for long without a project, which is why I’ve been painting every shelf black!
Once the shelving was done, I decided to paint the bottom units in a stone/cream colour and sprayed the existing handles black to tie the whole look together. A new carpet meant this room was complete.
The Rest of the House
We haven’t yet touched the remaining rooms in the house. Besides the two bedrooms mentioned above (master bedroom and home office) we have two other decent sized bedrooms, one has an ensuite.
There’s the family bathroom, which absolutely needs some TLC but isn’t in terrible condition.
Then we have the downstairs bathroom and the dining room.
The dining room is laid out exactly as it was in our old house, with the table, rug, painting and light fitting. Besides the green carpet, that you can barely see under the rug, that room isn’t too bad either.
So there you have it, our new house. There’s a lot of work to do, but we’ve managed to get a couple of rooms looking nice at least! This page will be updated whenever anything new happens or changes are made.