The house is ours

We have done the final settlement on the new country house and the property managers have already shown it to prospective tenants - which is both a relief and a sadness, that someone else gets to enjoy it before we do. We went out for a couple of hours on the weekend and had a good measure and inspect ... great but quite different to the meet-the-sellers the weekend before. For starters it was a cold and rainy day, and the house was completely empty, and a bit sad. 

It's definitely an old house and there are bits that don't quite meet and scuffs and stains. It doesn't have many cupboards, the carpets need replacing, there are drafts through the windows. But this is not our first rodeo! I have walked into a few newly purchased empty, echoing cold houses in my life and I know how to fix it :) 

The measuring of everything was good - I do like to operate off independently ascertained facts - for example I currently use 3.4 linear metres of hanging space for my clothes and the new house will have 2.4 linear metres. I need to get rid of one metre of clothes - this is good, this is quantifiable, I can do this. The numbers on bookshelves are much worse - the new house has just under 40% of the built-in bookshelving of our current house. Can I get rid of 60% of our books? Or do we just get more bookshelves? I am in a throwing out mood at the moment so we shall see. We have sheds and outbuildings but some of them look like the Historic Village we went to on school excursions so I'm assuming Not Weatherproof.

But whatever its shortcomings the house is honestly not even a small part of this place. From every window there is a view of the garden that makes me smile. It is so beautiful.... we've just got to power through the next couple of years (and not freak out about the ENORMOUS debt) then we can play shrubberies until our knees give out.