Matt’s Journal

If there was an award for the quickest settlement in a new home, Katie and I would have won it. Having packed two cars and a horse trailer both on last Friday and the Saturday morning, we were completely unpacked and ready to put things away by 2:30pm that Saturday afternoon. My father in law and I of course were busy building all manner of tables, Katie and her mother putting away bits in the kitchen and my mother helping bring in possessions from her house I had left there. Eventually, we dismissed the families and took stock of our own house, with a fair amount of clothing needing to be sorted upstairs.

Sunday morning was more of the same, we called up the utility companies and activated our BT phone line. Clothes were packed into wardrobes and anything not needed was dumped unceremoniously in the loft space! Short of a few food items, by Sunday evening, the whole house was completely as we wanted it, unpacked and all sorted out…the only thing we lacked was a TV signal.

Since then, the internet has been ordered and is due to be activated next Wednesday and we have Sky+ so we can watch TV. We also have two other additions to the house…..these guys!

Their names are Pusskins and Niblet, I got to name the latter. Pusskins has a smudge of white on his paws whereas Niblet is completely black. We looked at some of the local ad’s in the paper, visited a woman who took care of her pets better than herself and came back with these little guys!

So, as you can see all is going swimmingly! Expect a few more updates as of the 1st when we get internet access at home.

I have now taken delivery of two of the four products that I am aiming to start my new internet shop with, meaning I am not far from releasing to the world my new company! The products are productivity tools, helping you move awkward items and even lighten up doorways in complete darkness….so, watch this space.

In other news, Katie completed her first full event this weekend and she did it in her usual awesome style. Securing many repeat bookings and being lauded as a great asset to her company by exhibitors, the sky will be her limit!

I made the mistake of broadcasting the fact my football team would beat the second team in our club. Not only did we turn up with ten players and have to borrow one, we took a beating, coming out with with a 3-0 loss. Look at the image below to see how the winners got their own back!

Katie and I move into our new house in 5 days, excited isn’t the word!

Katie and I ventured to Lakeside, Thurrock (the world’s second biggest shopping centre, I think) to locate and take a look around every home owners worst nightmare: IKEA.

Leaving shortly after 6pm from home, we travelled to the local Matalan where we purchased a chocolate brown mirror, various kitchen equipment and even bought an HD Ready Freeview LCD TV with a built in DVD player.

Driving up the A127 on our way to Lakeside, I was pursued by a marked Police car that looked like it was on manoeuvres, blasting past me, stopping abruptly on the side of the road and then once I had overtaken it’s current position it would flash past within seconds.

Having not been to this IKEA before, we stumbled across a lot of places that would serve our house furnishing needs, one such shop was ASDA Living. Here, we bought lots of kitchen equipment, making sure to keep a continual theme colour wise and could not believe it that fifteen items would total less than forty pounds (you can see why people buy so much stuff they don’t need for their homes).

We finally found IKEA and we set about looking for the seat covers we had planned to buy. Walking through the store, following the arrows on the floor, we grabbed a trolley. Knowing that our seat covers were at the very end of the store, we added some really nifty pint and wine glasses, awesome matching table and floor lamps, by the time we were finished, we had added £150 more than budgeted for the two seat covers!

It was fun trying to fit them into the car, it was a feat of engineering! Items were moved and re-moved, put into foot wells and put on laps. We got it all in but I must say….if the house doesn’t look spiffing after this last shopping spree, I’ll be a monkey’s uncle!

Last night Katie and I went and looked at some prospective new homes. After getting married and being holed up in her parents house, we decided it was definitely time to bust out and live together away from the claws of our parents.

We had two properties to view, both in the same area but two very different looking houses. We were not even contemplating a flat, we needed bathrooms, stairs, separate kitchen and at least two bedrooms, a flat would be far too condensed.

Approaching the first property, it had a Mercedes AMG parked in the drive, however it looked tiny from the outside. Knocking on the door a ‘ard looking man opens it and tells us to look around….we proceed to do so but it’s a single mans pad alright, pictures of his (presumably deceased) dog are plastered on the walls and it has a massive TV in the lounge with no other furniture. We spend five minutes, politely thank the guy and walk away shaking our heads, it was not what we were after.

A five minute drive to the next house through the windiest backstreet’s sees us pull up at a mid-terrace house with a blue door, it looks small from the outside but very well kept. Knocking on the door we are beckoned in by a mother holding her little daughter, just then there seemed to be something about the place as we walked in. The kitchen was small but very functional, across from it was a downstairs toilet. We were ushered into the lounge where it had patio doors leading to a 35ft garden where we asked about BT lines, Sky points etc and they were already installed, good start! We went upstairs and found a bathroom with two bedrooms. One of them was a good size to have a single room/study, that was a notch on the rental stick for us. Finally, we came to the main bedroom, a bedroom with an en suite, where another notch was added, the lady proceeded to let us know that we could buy all the appliances and furniture for around £200, meaning we could just leave the fridge, washing machine, bed and bedside cabinets where they were before we moved in.

We were 110% sold, we walked away thinking it was the place for us. We reserved it this morning and will be moving in, in about a month. I will get some pictures as soon as we move in.

Finally, a place to call home!

A clever guy named Justin Wickett with a little help from tech guys sets his Twitter account to turn off the lights in his house by sending a text message to his Twitter account.

Today myself and Katie finally gave up our dream of owning our own flat for the time being. After months of being led up the garden path by our mortgage lender, a bereavement in the family, all the omens pointed towards us not completing on the flat.

I spoke to my finance director, he couldn’t do anything for us to help the mortgage along so after careful consideration we decided to pull out, pull funds together and look forward 9 months where we can have near a 20% deposit for a proper house, not a flat. I will most probably be moving into Katie’s parents house, as the wedding is only 5 months away, and saving as much as damn possible.

With both myself and Katie working hard and tightening for 9-12months, we have calculated we can afford a £200,000+ house in about a year, something that will be conducive towards starting a family and getting a few animals. I am gutted we are losing out, I will lose money on the flat but in the long run it stands to benefit us.

Watching Panorama on BBC One tonight, I am hoping the housing market evens out when we come to buying, I need to move out and have our own place!