I ended the previous post – Our Lucky Break? with us heading off to the show home for a house we were wanting to buy. I didn’t understand it at the time but when you buy a new build, you are buying a specific type of house that isn’t built yet so you need to see a show home that is exactly the same. They all have names, and each development only has specific show homes on their site, meaning if yours isn’t one of them (which ours wasn’t) you have to visit a different development to see the home. The nearest site to us that had the particular house we were interested in was over an hour away near a place called Garstang, so off we went! ROAD TRIP.
Having spoken all night about it on Saturday, we were almost certain we were going to take the house. Fortunately, we had been saving so we had the money necessary to pay the reservation fee if applicable, so the only thing that stood between us was us liking what we saw from the show home.
My parents had recently visited the development we were interested in but my in-laws hadn’t seen it, so with this very new, quick development in our house search, we figured we would take them along for the ride to the show home and then all being well, drive over to the development afterward to show them that, too. The development just so happens to be in a town that is smack bang in the middle of where both our families live (a town called Lowton) and the prospect of me moving in the direction of Liverpool and being only 30 minutes away versus more than an hour away already had my parents hysterical with excitement. My mum was itching to hear every detail, and everything was just riding on whether we liked the show home.
THE SHOW HOME
As soon as we stepped foot in the show home, we loved it.
I mean, we knew we would because we had already seen the floor plan and done a virtual tour, but actually being inside of it felt amazing. I got so emotional inside thinking oh my GOD, this could be OUR HOME.
I didn’t fully understand the world of new builds at that point, so I kept asking James things like “so would we have this?” and “would the room look exactly like this?” and “would our bathroom be the same as this?”, it took him about 50 attempts and some slight exasperation to finally make me realise that we would have EXACTLY what I was seeing in the house, because new builds are built the same. We would be buying this exact home, just on the development we had seen and loved.
The Reservation
We called our new friend Will and said that we were driving over to the development to show my in-laws, and would it be possible to meet to talk about next steps? Off we went and within the hour we were there. A bundle of nerves, excitement, and anticipation, we met with Will and talked about next steps.
If you know me, you will know that I am notoriously bad with money. I have never had savings, and I’ve just never been good at managing my finances. But over the last 2 years or so I have gotten a lot better, and I even learned to save a little. The reservation fee was £500, and I had exactly £500 in my savings (because OK, even though I’m learning, I’m not perfect and have to dip into them pretty much all the time!). I wanted to pay the reservation fee, and James knowing how much it meant to me allowed me to do so. I was so proud and emotional at the same time, and I really struggled to keep it together.
We reserved the home and arranged to go back the following Saturday to officially finalise everything and sign all the paperwork etc. We just couldn’t believe it was happening.
The Celebration
We walked out of the office and just looked at each other. We had just reserved our new home!!!! Cue my tears that had been building up all morning, my mum-in-law nearly joining me with the fellas just looking at us like we were crazy. I told my parents, everybody was ecstatic and then we realised we were STARVING as it had now been several hours, we were mid-afternoon and none of us had eaten.
I had seen this barn nearby and that it had a cafe so we decided to head there for a bite to eat, not knowing that the place was BEAUTIFUL and the food was DELICIOUS. The place reminded me a little of a part of our wedding venue, and I was so excited that this would be our local place! After some lunch and time to recover from the shock and excitement that we had just reserved a home, I called my parents to tell them everything!
We went home, cracked open a bottle of fizz, had 50 more calls with my mum who was just beside herself with joy and planning out the various occasions she would be able to just hop on the East Lancs to have a brew with me, cook my tea, clean my house for me, help with the baby we don’t have, the LOT. I think she actually could have even been more excited than us! But we just relished the loveliness of it all, and it really was lovely. For reasons I can’t really go into here, these last few months have been nothing short of awful. It has been shit show after shit show around us and being able to have a hint of some positive news just felt so good. SO GOOD. We relished in the excitement and got ready for the following week.
The Progress
It was all so exciting. We met with the lovely Will again the next week to finalise things, we began to choose what we were going to have in the house, and we even got to see the building progression of our actual house from a distance – half of it was built already and it was making progress. It was all wonderful, and all I kept hoping was that it wasn’t too good to be true.
And then we had a meeting. THE meeting. The meeting that will be from hereon known as The Meeting From Hell… and all the excitement was completely flipped on its head.
To be continued…
Reflect and Introspect 
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