We may have found THE house!
We made the decision back at the end of 2023 that we wanted to move our life up to the North East of England.
This would be a 'returning home of sorts' for Neil, having left his family home in the North East at the age of nineteen for his university years and although returning once graduated he would not stay for long as he realised he needed to be in the busy and chaotic lights of London to progress his Media career. For the next twenty odd years Neil moved around the UK and Northern Ireland carving out a career in TV and Media with finally putting down roots in Worcestershire with me!
A completely different life path for me as I have never really left the Midlands. I grew up in the South of Birmingham moving to the outskirts in to the Worcestershire area in 2000.
At the beginning of this year we knew that it was time as there was now nothing keeping me in the Midlands and Neil was pining for the North East having been land locked (as he kept saying!) in the Worcestershire country side since 2010.
In early January we started to look at what we could afford and what kind of houses and areas we could find the type of house we were looking for. We didn't really have many conditions, Neil didn't want a new build as we had been living in a newish build property and we both wanted something with a bit more character but with at least four bedrooms. Neil needed an office and I needed what I like to refer as a hobby room. The only thing I would have ideally liked would have been a conservatory on the back of the property... I kind of saw myself sitting in there in the evenings away from the sound of the TV, not that I read that much and to be honest we are talking graphic novels and superhero comics, occasionally it may be a proper novel... but not very often!
In the past every time we were up here visiting Neils family we were always looking at properties on the iPad, but nothing major... just what was available at the time and I would politely ask if certain neighbourhood were OK... that kind of thing as not knowing the area.
By the end of January we'd found a few properties we were interested in, made a few bookings to view them and headed up North for the weekend.
Growing up in the outskirts of Birmingham everything was very much a suburban life. An ordinary road with 1940's built houses (depending on where you lived) either side of the road, front gardens with space for one or two cars, we even had a touring caravan on the front of the house I grew up in (only for a week or so while it was being packed to the brim full of holiday gear before we set of for our two weeks annual summer holidays in Cornwall) and a rear garden. Ours happened to be a good size and rather long. Dad seemed to love creating stripes with the peril mower but got to hate it as time went on as it took up most of Sundays just cutting the lawn. So my reason for saying all this is because I wasn't used to houses that overlooked each over and having an ally way in between their backyards. The first house we were viewing was exactly this type of house!
The pictures of the inside looked amazing but as I say I really didn't think I would take to it as I really wanted a rear garden. Not necessarily with grass as I hate gutting lawns! However after being chased by a woman shouting... "you can't park there, this is private property" (That's another story for a later time!) we opened the front gate, walked up the path, climbed a couple of steps and stood infront of what seemed like this huge front door and rang the bell.
Pleasantries exchanged and we were asked inside in to what I think would be called or described as a vestibule and from here we got our first view of the inner front door which can only be described as this magnificent victorian type front door, at this point we didn't know the house was Edwardian in design and NOT Victorian. Slightly wider in size than a normal door and it had this amazing stained glass in the top half and surrounding windows... we then walked in to the reception hall and WOW!
I think we both looked at each other and thought "This is the one"!
We looked around the rest of the house and everything just said, "This is perfect!". Except for me, it was the fact that the house had no parking on the front, there was no garage as such and the house didn't have what I would call a rear garden it was more of a back yard and it had the ally running at the back. As I said earlier I was not used to this kind of layout and was not sure whether this would be right for us... BUT, I absolutely loved the house! I think Neil would have moved in, there and then!
We had three or four other houses to see the weekend, however one annoyingly cancelled, one turned out to be very dark upstairs... so we instantly ruled that one out and the one I was really looking forward to viewing which backed on to open fields was literally behind a load of other houses and the fields that you could just about see from the front were already being built on with new houses. Like the dark house, we ruled that one out too. I suppose it really didn't help that we saw the largest house first as it was looking like none of the others were ever going to come close to beating it.
We were up in the North East for 4 days and we had booked these viewings over a couple of the days, so on the day before we came home I suggested that as we both fell in love with the first property we should see if we could book a second viewing before we headed back home and luckily they agreed so we had our second viewing and well.... what can I say...