2021

 I was really excited about not writing a blog for a while because I had this fabulous reason and I was really excited to get to the point where I could share it and then have all of this stuff to talk about because of said reason. I'm rubbish at keeping secrets. I even have a bounce that people can tell I'm holding onto an hiding something, or I just accidentally blurt it out without thinking, so more people knew about this than I originally wanted, but that wasn't so bad. Until today. 

Today I got some news about the new house I am in the process of buying and it's bad enough that I'm looking at all of the bills I have already paid out for and wondering if I should just write it off as a lesson learnt and walk away. It's an expensive lesson, and the few people I have talked to about it have said that oh so useful phrase of 'it happens' but it's that whole thing of trying to avoid the 'sunk cost fallacy' - I've already paid out money I won't get back if I don't do the thing, so I should do the thing even if it causes more stress or costs me more money. Honestly, it's probably the reason people go through with ridiculously fancy weddings - you know, when the world isn't going to crap because of a horrid virus - and then get divorced a year later. They're too deep in the hole already. 

Unfortunately, the nature of the system does mean that you pay some of your solicitor's fees, a broker fee if you're using one (based on my experience, I would say don't) and for a survey, and that survey can throw up all sorts of issues that you never would have imagined, which either puts you back to the start with price negotiations, or it puts you even further back to the start of things by pulling out of a sale and trying to find something new. 

In the least snobbish way possible, the people I know work in offices. My family, my friends, friends of my family - the majority of people I know and trust work in an office doing office-y things and not building or renovating houses. That's not a conscious or intentional choice; in fact, I would prefer to change that because having mates in trades normally means you can get issues solved more quickly, even when you don't believe in asking friends for discounts on their labour. Looking around at houses, I don't know what I'm looking for in terms of issues. I don't know how much things will costs to change. I am the definition of a newbie to all of this and that makes it really difficult. 

At this point, I am still waiting for the full report to come through so I can figure out what on Earth to do, but even if I can get my head around to doing all of the work, and we can sort out the financial side of it, it doesn't feel like the same house anymore. I don't feel the same way about it, because I'm scared that a lot of the things I loved about the place will need to go and it will effectively become an absolute money pit, which I definitely wasn't signing up for. So maybe I should just go back to writing about literally anything else.