Finally moving house!!!

After a long process we are finally moving house!

We finally exchanged at the end of last week and are completing (moving in) on Monday 19th October. Moving from Fishbourne (Chichester) in West Sussex to North Bersted (Bognor Regis).

The new house is a large 1937 semi-detached property with 4 bedrooms, garage etc, but what we really loved was the garden. It has an 80 foot rear garden, but this then leads on to a 0.3 acre woodland, which is all part of the property.

Here are some pictures.

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No inside pictures.

The inside needs a lot of work to bring it up to date. The Kitchen and Bathroom are being ripped out as soon as we move in and the rest of the house redecorated. It also has fireplaces in the lounge and dining room, but they are both blanked off with electric and gas fires in front. We are getting those removed and the original fireplaces reinstated, with an open fire in the lounge and a wood burner in the dinning room.

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Some history.

As some of you know I've had a bit of a house nightmare over the past few years.

We purchased a newly built house in 2006 and happily lived there for years. However in the 2012 storms the house flooded and we had to move out for 6 months whilst it was dried out and restored. Bit of a nightmare anyway, but made worse because my son was only 5 weeks old when it happened. The house wasn't in a flood plain and whilst Fishbourne village did have a history of flooding, the actual house's location didn't, so no authority or service was interested in investigating the causes, or putting into place any preventative measures.

After being restored we moved back in December 2012, just in time for Christmas. Roll on a year and Christmas eve 2013 the UK had another really bad storm with very heavy rainfall, and guess what? The house flooded on Christmas Eve! Luckily we were going away for Christmas to our parents, but did manage to secure a rented property the same day. A really nice 16th century cottage. The house was again restored and in April 2014 we put it on the market for sale. We stayed in the rented cottage until August. We had a few offers and 2 near sales, but they both pulled out when they discovered we had flooded twice and not once (out estate agent wasn't the best). So we moved back into the house in August and continued to try and sell it.

We did a lot on this time to get everything possible investigated. We contacted every agency (Environment, Highways, local water, planning control etc), and whilst initially no interested in helping once we got out PM involved they suddenly all investigated and checked everything for us. Sadly we didn't achieve any proper answers, but all of the drainage system in Fishbourne has since been cleaned and maintained, and all ditches and balance ponds cleared. Plus the local pumping station renewed.

The government then announced a flood grant scheme so we looked into this and discovered we could claim up to £5K towards flood prevention work. We had a flood survey carried out, as well as an independent surveyor whom investigated everything to work out the best preventative solution. The total works ended up costing about £7K, but we did get the full £5K grant towards it. We had special air vents with none return valves, flood barriers to front and back doors, all walls sealed, and a foundation sump pump fitted to extract any water that got into the house's foundations.

Roll on to April 2015 and the estate agent wasn't being that great so we took the house off the market and and put it on with another agent whom was also a chartered surveyor and knew about selling houses with flood history. With the flood prevention work now completed they found us an investment buyer within 4 weeks!

Now 4 months after that we have finally exchanged and are moving to our new house in a couple of weeks. We had a short sales chain, but the house we purchases had a lot of complications because the owners had lost a lot of paperwork regarding things like Deeds and Tree preservation orders. Anyway, that is now all sorted and we are moving!! :)

Glad to hear this, Harrison. :) All those nightmares with the previous house hasn't sounded much fun at all, and the new place looks great! :)

It's a lot of work maintaining a garden like that though, hope you're up for it! ;)

Really looks Nice Dave & what a lovely kind of home to bring a growing Family up in.

Guess you'll need to consider a ride-on mower now. :D

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Awesome. You no longer need the boat.

Sounds nice. The big garden should be good. I miss having a decent sized garden.

Lets hope you won't have any more trouble.

Nice man, although I wouldn't be the biggest fan of the garden, I absolutely hate gardening myself.

:lol: It definitely takes motivation to work on a garden and keep it nice.

Our existing house, being a new build, has a fairly small garden and we have always hated how restrictive it is, especially for Tom to play in.

When looking to move one of our main aims was to find somewhere with a much bigger garden. We have lots of plans for it over time. One of the biggest is to build a cabin in the garden that can be used as an art studio (Annabel wants to get back into pottery so that would be great to house a potters wheel) and also for painting, screen printing etc.. I've always wanted a dedicated art studio space for this.

Also at the moment the previous owners had the bottom of the main garden as a vegetable garden. However I want to move that down into the larger woods area as there is a perfect section to the right which seems to get a lot of light. Then the main garden can be a nice long grass area for Tom to play in. And maybe some decking and a summer house at the end with a BBQ.

The woodland is also at the moment fairly wild with bluebells coming up (as seen in the photos), but we want to turn it into more of a formal garden with grass and paths. That will take some time but will be an enjoyable on going project.

My dad has also said he will build Tom a tree house as there is a perfect Oak tree for this. Although I think at the moment the plans the 2 of them have come up with might be a bit too ambitious. :lol:

It also had a lot of fruit trees and bushes. Plums, Pears, Apples, Currants, Blackberries, Gooseberry's etc.. which is great as we really enjoy growing fruit.

Anyway, loads of possibilities and plans. First though the actual house needs the work. I want to repaint the outside as it's a pink colour at the moment from a brick render they had applies some years ago. I'm going to repaint it a light cream or white. The fireplaces in both the lounge and dinning room are currently closed off and we want to restore those to working condition so will source some period fireplace surrounds from reclamation yards. We also want to take up all the old carpets downstairs and expose the floorboards. Possibly sand and stain them. And the Kitchen and Bathroom will be ripped out as soon as we move in and replaced. Plus the rest of the house needs redecorating as it hasn't been updated in a very long time. nearly every wall is papered so some might need to be replastered/skimmed. And finally the electrics will need some work as there are not many sockets in some rooms (especially my new games/study room).

Man, that garden is bigger then my house and the street together. :D
Tom will have a lot of space to play. Birthday parties will be so cool with that space.
I went looking in google maps, and is it only like 10km from you previous home correct?
You should be quite near the sea.

Yes that's right. About 5 miles, whatever that is in KM. And just over 1 mile 1.6KM from the sea. And they have lots of parks and playgrounds, plus a pier and small amusement arcade. Bognor Regis is a proper seaside holiday location. It also has Butlins there too. The house isn't quite in main Bognor, just north of it in North Berstead.

If you wanted to find the actual house on Googlemaps it is in Greencourt Drive. I will PM you an exact link.

I love google Maps, i sent hours looking at places i never went, even places i would like to go.
I found the house, very easy as it is the only one with a red mail post in front of it... :-) a lot of houses are similar. without the post would be harder.
Funny, in maps, the gate more in the left side is different. It should be the gate that goes directly to back garden. They change it. witch on is the older version?

I guess your photos are recent, in google maps, you can see that stuff you put on walls for the plants to grown up. In you photos, plants are bigger and they are climbing the wals.

I hadn't actually noticed the gate was different. We actually want to replace it with a solid one so people can't see down the sideway.

I think you are right that the Googlemaps images are quite old, as the tarmac on the drive looks quite new and as you see the plant trellis on the walls doesn't have plants on it.

The council also look like they are resurfacing the road this week too, so that will be good before we move in.

House looks great :thumbs: would definitely like a big garden like that :cool:

@ H

Look out for Tar in the house if they are re-surfacing....

I still have some concerns about you Flooding though...... :tease:

Is that because of it being in Bognor?

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Originally Posted by Harrison

Is that because of it being in Bognor?

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Yes mate. It's only 3 metres above sea level! :blink:

http://www.streetlist.co.uk/address/...Regis-PO22-9AQ

You looked up the street called North Bersted. My road is Greencourt Drive and that is 6 metres above sea level. With no history of flooding.

http://www.streetlist.co.uk/streets/...Regis-PO21-5EU

You can't expect to be that high above sea level when living on the coast. Although, saying that our old house in Fishbourne is 8 metres above sea level according it that site! :lol: Although the flood survey we had conducted stated it was 4 metres, which I tend to believe more.

Only 3 more days to go now until the move on Monday.

I've been off work this week to pack the whole house up myself and I'm slowly getting there. Biggest job was the loft as it has been added to ever since we moved in (2006), so there was a lot of stuff up there. Took all yesterday to sort that out with the help of my dad. I couldn't believe how many boxes of Tom's baby and toddler clothes we had up there (about 15 moving boxes worth).

There's also been a few trips to the local dump to get rid of a lot of stuff out of the garden, shed, loft and some horrible furniture that's seen better days.

In a way it's good to move house as it forces you to go through everything you own and really sort it out. Getting rid of everything you really don't need.

The current owners of our new house also didn't mind us taking all the garden plant pots to the new house last weekend, so that saved some time on moving day.

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Originally Posted by Harrison

In a way it's good to move house as it forces you to go through everything you own and really sort it out. Getting rid of everything you really don't need.

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It seems so easy when you move, at least for me, I can easily separate myself from stuff, my girlfriend is not so good regarding that. Since 1-2 years I want to tidy up a bit at home, as nothing has been done since I/we live there. You can clearly see that 2 people already can hoard a lot of stuff after a certain time, mainly buying new stuff AND keeping the old one instead of getting rid of it straight away. I always want to do it, as I know exactly what I wanna keep and what I won't keep, but missus has a bit more problems with that.

Very much the same. My wife won't get rid of anything, keeping shoes and clothes even when they are worn out. And old furniture, which I've nearly managed to get rid of.

My GF would put a lot of stuff in the garbage. Specially my Miggys.....

That is also true. My wife only keeps her own stuff.

According to her all my stuff is junk and clutter and taking up space she could be using as a guest bedroom. Amazing logic, to have a guess bedroom that might get used 3 times a year at most! Instead I managed to reach a compromise. We are using the smallest bedroom as a guest/spare room and she can have a small desk in my room for her school/office work.

Which has just made me realise, I've not mentioned the new room I will have. The room over the garage will be my office/study/games room. It measures 17'8" by 8' (5.38m x 2.06m). Nice and large to finally set everything up how I want it. I will post some pictures of that setup once it is all finished, as the room will need decorating and I need to get an electrician to install extra plug sockets and remove a very dodgy looking single bar heater which is currently installed above the main window! (I could do that myself but by law you have to get a qualified electrician in). Once that is all done and the room painted it should be great. I might also need to replace the carpet, but we've not been able to really look at and inspect the house carpets until we finally move in next week.

I'm also considering installing Ethernet around the house as I'm going to be pretty much renovating and decorating every room.

I'm also considering starting up a blog about the house to document the progress from start to finish. We have so many ideas it could end up being great, and documenting it should motivate us (me mainly) to work on it more.

Sounds good. I'll look forward to you posting pictures of your new space :).

Do you still have carpets in your house(s)? Is that common in the UK, or is it only because it's an older house which has not been renovated since longer time?

A lot of people do still have carpets in all rooms of their houses (other than the kitchen). However for quite some time now it is more common to have wood or laminate flooring downstairs and carpets upstairs. It's how we have always had it. My parents however do still have carpet downstairs too.

With the house we are buying, at the moment the whole house has carpet, but being a 1930's house a lot of people have got rid of the carpets and stained the floorboards downstairs as they tend to be very good boards.

Most UK house have stair and upstairs carpets though.

One thing I always find strange though is carpet in the bathroom. This used to be fairly common until the last 30 years.

I know a lot of countries in Europe have mainly tiled floors, even in the bedrooms. But they tend to be much hotter places in the summer.

What do you have? And what is most common in Luxembourg?

We've always had carpet in the bathroom. Never had a problem with it as it as it only gets wet if you are really careless. I think its more comfortable having carpet in the bathroom.

My Dad's current house has a tiled floor in the bathroom, and that always shows up the dust.

We mostly have tiles everywhere in the house. I have f.ex. laminate in my 3 bedrooms, like you said, it's not as cold as tiles. But usually you put rugs/carpets around to make it warmer.

I remember when I was a kid, that at that time there were also still carpets in every room, but it's just so unhealthy, especially for little kids crawling over it and inhaling all the dust.

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little kids crawling over it and inhaling all the dust.

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That's the biggest point.

My parents told me that when they were young you were considered rich if you could have carpet in every room, and only poor people had floorboards and a rug. Funny how times change and go full circle.

In the 1970's I remember everything used to get carpet, even the side panel on baths!

I totally agree that wood, tile or laminate flooring is so much healthier than carpet. You can easily sweep or vacuum it every day and know it is completely clean. Carpet can habour loads of insects and dirt, although we do have a carpet cleaner which works really well. I don't think it's safe without carpet on the stairs though.

@Steve. The problem with carpet in the bathroom is water. With tiles it doesn't matter if you get out of the bath or shower and get the floor a bit wet. You can just wipe it up or mop it. With carpet it soaks in then you have to wait for it to the dry. Not very healthy. And not good for the floor underneath.

Finally all moved in now. Very stressful and tiring moving Monday. Our house completed really early in the day at about 10, but the keys to the new house didn't get released until 14:30.

Everything moved in by 18:00 though.

Still packing boxes everywhere and can't find anything. Lol. Everything was labeled but as usual removal men didn't take any notice of box labels and put them anywhere.

Worst is broadband went live on Monday and I've not found the router yet! Same with phone.. Have the base but can't find the handset. They will turn up.

Sky installed yesterday so at least have the TV up and running. Managed to get the newer 2TB HD box, which is much faster than our old one to use. Plus 350 hours recording space, compared with 60 hours on the normal box. Also have a second standard box installed in the office.

The house décor is in a worst state now we can see it without the previous owner's furniture and stuff. Every room will need fully redecorating, which will be fun as all walls are papered.

Also some really horrible built in cupboards and shelves in every bedroom. Started ripping them out of Tom's room already.

Kitchen and bathroom are as hideous as we thought but we are coping. Can't wait for our builder to rip them out and replace them.

Going to start taking pictures today to document the progress, then will set up a blog.

Have fun with the decorating :). Hopefully the wallpaper won't be too much trouble. Some of our house had wallpaper when we moved in. The wallpaper in the bedrooms came off really easily, but the wallpaper in the lounge, hallway and stairs didn't want to come off at all. No idea what they used to stick it on with.

Doing the hardest wallpaper in house first. Woodchip! Actually not too bad as my dad's been helping me and he has some wallpaper stripper that works quite well. We can't use a steamer because of the age of the house and the type of plaster it will have.

The first room to be decorated is Tom's. So far dismantled loads of built in shelving and cupboards. Those were a nightmare to remove. And stripped half the wallpaper. Going to continue tomorrow. Hopefully get the skirting rubbed down and painted, then it's pirate wallpaper on one wall and painted white for the rest. Then new carpet and finally paint the built in waldrobe the same blue as the wallpaper.

I will post some pics once done.

@ H

Ugh! Wood chip paper indeed.... It usually comes off easier ......the more coats of paint it's had, but a lot depends on the quality of the paper itself. :dry:

Is it just one room or the whole house in different colours of Wood chip?

Just 2 walls of Tom's room thankfully. Rest of the house is papered, but a lot of it is pealing already and just pulling a piece in the hall and the whole sheet came off, so most should be easy.

Worst issue at the moment is the Internet. Was meant to go live last week, but nothing. Even though phone line was working the day we moved in. Indian call centre rang yesterday and said I couldn't get the Internet where I live because of line quality. I instantly blew the idiot up as I'm currently connected to my neighbours bt infinity wifi and getting 5Mbps via the bt hotspot setup. Proving we can get it. The Indian didn't understand a word said and was just talking over me.

Eventually he agreed to arrange a line and local cabinet engineer investigation to take place this week, then to place a new order on Thursday. Idiots.

When will the world realise we don't want idiot Indian call centres ringing us up. We want people from our own country to talk to. Best service I've ever had is Admiral insurance, who use a Welsh call centre.

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That's good that the paper came off easily. Will you be putting new wallpaper on, or just painting it?

Ntb for the wood-chip scenario. Nice one! :thumbs:

RE Internet issues: The only way you'll get away from Indian Call Centres is tell BT to do one. ;)

Get cable from Virgin if you can......

No cable here, and I would not touch Virgin with a barge pole.

I will find out this week on Thursday what is happening. Strange that the previous owners had infinity here but now the line seems to not be able to support it (according to the Indian call centre). I'm wondering if they connected the new phone number to old hardware at the exchange, or in the local cabinet.

It's going to be more than annoying if I have to go back to adsl.

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Originally Posted by Stephen Coates

That's good that the paper came off easily. Will you be putting new wallpaper on, or just painting it?

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In Tom's room I'm just papering one wall with Laura Ashley pirate paper, with the other walls painted white.

Hallway we might paint if the walls look ok once stripped. My game/study room is painted lining paper at the moment so I will proudly just paint over it to freshen it up. Not sure about main bedroom yet. And probaby just paint 4th bedroom. Lounge and dining room are currently fairly plain white paper which we are going to live with four the moment until we get the 2 chimneys done (wood burner in dining room and open fire in lounge).

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Green court drive seem to be 8 meters above sea level to me.

I guess in 4 years the tectonic plates may have shifted a bit and the sea levels changed too

Wow, forgot about this thread. I will have to make a follow up thread soon showing the house and garden with before and after photos.

Still actually working on the house. Lots has happened since we moved in. Some great things like discovering we had parquet flooring under all the carpets downstairs, so ripped all the horrible carpets up and exposed the lovely wood flooring. Needs sanding and recoating but not urgent.

Discovered some very dodgy 70s wiring, and in the end have done most of the electrics myself. All plug sockets were still mounted on the skirting boards, so I've been chasing out the walls and mounting the sockets up into the walls, plus adding a lot more sockets and usb charging points.

Walls were quite bad under a lot of the paper in many rooms. Cracks, holes, lots of scraps. Took a lot of filling, sanding, skimming, but nearly all rooms done now. Dinning room and main bedroom walls still need doing but budget has meant we have left those 2 rooms until last.

Kitchen was the first room done soon after moving in using a builder. But he was bad and we made him leave the job after a lot of really shoddy work. I had to fix his work and finish it off myself. Will go into that more another time.

In contrast the new bathroom we had fitted about 18 months ago is superb. Couldn't have found a better kitchen fitter at an amazing price.

In the lounge and dinning room I ripped thr horrible electric and gas fires out and opened up the chimneys. Discovered the old owned had ripped the lot out, so only the brick chimneys and fireplace holes remained. After much searching we found companies to fit a really nice open fire in the lounge, and a wood burner in the dinning room. Really pleased with both.

Also discovered after taking wallpaper off that the house originally had picture rails, so I've been refitting those as I've completed each room. As the rooms ceilings are high it looks much better with them.

Will create a proper blog as originally mentioned over the summer showing it all.

One nightware we have had is trees. In storms about 18 months ago a huge ash tree fell down. It wasn't actually one of ours in our woods, but just the other side of the bottom fence in a neighbours garden Their garden was so small the uprooted root ball lifted their whole garden up! The tree fell right across our bottom land though, and damaged my nice old pear tree. After much insurance company arguing they would only cover the cost of removal on their land, so we had to pay a friend whom is a tree surgeon to cut up the whole tree for us. A lot of firewood though!

Roll on about 8 months and another similar size tree fell down, this time one of ours, but it fell along our back boundary and didn't really damage anything other than resting across a hazel tree. I cut the end off to clear it but the rest is just lying along the ground at the back of the land until I need the wood. Tom is using it to climb on!

Then the damaging pear tree finally fell over recently in a storm but didn't damage anything. Took me a couple of days to chop it up and clear it. Larger empty space left where that was. Will probably replace it with another tree. Maybe a plum tree or oriental cherry.

Also lost a couple of the Apple trees. They just died. Not sure the reason. They both fruited the first year but then thr bark pealed and they both died over the winter. They were next to each other, but not really sure why. Now both firewood.

Anyway, puctures to follow later in the summer.

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Some great things like discovering we had parquet flooring under all the carpets downstairs,

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Discovering? How? was it under the actual floor? If so, how did you discover? this you break any tile so you can see under it?

No. The old owners had carpet fitted over the top of the parquet flooring. So there was underlay and then carpet on top. And the fitters had even nailed the carpet gripper rods right into the parquet flooring which was really annoying. But I was very careful removing all the nails from the grippers so it doesn't notice too much, but there are lots of little holes where they were. I am missing some parquet around the fireplace as the hearth is a different shape to the original the house had, so I need to find some from a reclamation yard. So you can see a bit of the floorboards beneath. The slate harth in the dining room for the woodburner was cut to fit the flooring so that was ok.