If you’re anywhere near as old as me you will have grown up with Phil and Kirstie on the telly. I must have watched thousands of hours of their gentle banter and playground flirting over the years. I consider myself to be a committed fan.
But when I saw the first series of ‘Love it or List it?’ I wasn’t sure about it. Firstly I have an issue with the title, because we don’t list homes in the UK we sell them. And secondly, it’s always pretty obvious which way it’s gonna go. It’s not down to how successful the renovation is, you can often call it as soon as you see the downtrodden husband or wife up against their bullish partner.
But criticism aside, it’s a common family quandary. The decision of whether to stay put or pack-up can rumble on. It certainly did in my experience.
LOVE IT OR LIST IT?
Our ‘love it or list it’ debate lasted two years.
We never bought our house intending for it to be our ‘forever home’. Back then I thought our forever home would be somewhere semi-rural and idyllic. Where I would live my best life baking, gardening and working in my attic studio overlooking a forest. So when the news came in that a three-storey house was being built on the land at the end of our garden, and the airport was expanding, we made our decision. It was time to find our forever home.
Except by this stage I’d had a baby and realised how ridiculous it was to want to live far away from people and shops that sell wine. So the semi-rural location was dropped.
THE SEARCH
My criteria was, in my opinion, pretty straightforward,
- Must be Victorian or Edwardian.
- Can’t be north-facing.
- Can’t be too overlooked.
- Can’t be over three floors.
- Must have parking.
So we spent two years obsessing over Rightmove and viewing houses, which was actually a total of about 6 viewings. Because it turns out my search criteria were an impossible ask. We did see some utterly beautiful houses but they never quite (in my mind) matched up to ours. Our house had problems but so did every other house, they were just different problems.
So it turned out that in spite of the busy road, the ugly house being built at the end of our garden, and the increased aeroplane noise, I still loved our house more than anything else we saw. By a mile. So that was that. In spite of all the location issues with our home, our hearts were committed to our house.
LOVE IT
I’m really glad we went through the process because seeing other houses reminded me of why I love our home so much.
I love hearing bird songs against the faint backdrop of the sirens, ships and planes, reminding me we’re lucky to be part of city life.
I love that I can walk to all the tedious baby groups and activities I drag myself to each day.
I love that I can get my hands on a bottle of wine from the Tesco Express within four minutes.
I love that there is a bakery at the end of the road, a small wood, and we can walk down to the river (even if you do have to avoid quite a bit of dog shit along the way).
And I love that Freya will go to school with children from different cultures who speak different languages. It may be a bit grimey but it has soul and diversity, and I’ll take that over somewhere bland and uninteresting.
So we are staying, hooray. And we’ve saved on all those pointless moving costs and taxes which will definitely be going towards the ‘love it’ budget.
THE BUILD
So here are the ‘love it’ plans..
- Take down the chimney breast between the kitchen and dining room.
- Fit metal framed doors across the back of the house.
- Rejig the kitchen a little bit.
- Sort all the floors out ( I really hate the floors!)
- Replace the hideous bannister and newel post (sadly the original was ripped out when our house was previously split into two flats).
- Restyle the hallway.
- Sort the storage issues out in the bathroom.
- Tile the downstairs cloakroom.
- Replace our beautiful but totally knackered sash windows.
- Restyle the guest bedroom.
- Restyle the nursery.
- Landscape the patio area.
That’s a lot to do but I’m so ready for it. Project ‘love it’ is well and truly underway. I can’t wait to keep you posted and show you some reveals along the way.
Have you gone through your own LOVE IT OR LIST IT debate? What did you decide?
