We bought the house about 18 months ago knowing that it would be a project house. It’s taken us and our two girls (now 7 & 9 years old) this long to get settled into a brand new area and get everything ready to start the building work in the next month or so. This blog will follow our progress through the planning so far and the build going forward. It will serve as something for us to look back on in the future, for our friends and family to see how its going and hopefully as a useful resource for anyone planning something similar in the future.

We have done this type of project once before. But that was before children, so this time there will be a lot more juggling involved. Our previous project was back in 2009 and our blog on that project can be found at https://orpwood.wordpress.com

The old house

The previous house was lovely and many of our friends and family thought we were mad to want to move. So why did we move:

• We always wanted to live by the sea. At the time we both had a lot of flexibility in our jobs as far as location was concerned. So our search area was within 20 minutes of the coast anywhere between Exeter and Chichester.
• If we were going to move, we wanted to do it before the kids got much older. We wanted to do it before they got to secondary school.
• Where we lived was quite remote. Though you could drive to a supermarket in five minutes, and get to a mainline station in twenty minutes, there was very little within a quick walk. As the girls got older we wanted them to have the freedom to walk to their friends, to school, the local shops and possibly a bus or train to a large town or city.
• The old house was great for a couple, or a couple with young children but we felt we would need more rooms as the children got older and wanted more of their own space.

So where did we end up?

We now live in a village just outside Christchurch on the south coast of England. We’re a few minutes drive from the beach and on the edge of the New Forest. The local primary and secondary school, which both have excellent reputations, are walking distance, as are the local shops and train station. We can quickly get into Southampton and Bournemouth, which both offer great job opportunities in the future if we need new jobs.

So we got the area sorted. Just need to get the house sorted…