FIRST HOME - any good advice?

[strawberryblue]

Hello,

We are moving into our first home - with two young kids.

Any pearls of wisdom things we should do not do? Buy?

Thank you!

Take meter readings and photos and log them with your energy provider the very day you move in. I didn’t know to do this for my first house and very quickly had bailiffs at the door chasing the previous occupants.

As in you've bought somewhere?

In which case if you want to paint or carpet anywhere consider not unpacking everything

Introduce your self to your neighbours

Measure the space for your sofa. We didn't and it was a beast of a mistake. Ginormous couch in a big living room but it was just a beast. Comfy though 🤷‍♀️

Not just the space, the doors it has to go
through first! Ours wouldn’t come in the front door so the sofa delivery people left it in the back garden

Don't buy cheap furniture just to fill the space, hold off and buy better quality items

Live with it for at least 3 months before you decide to redecorate/buy furniture/extend/new bathroom. You might plan on using certain rooms one way and then a better layout or rejig might come to light that you wouldn't have thought of without living in it for a while.

Yeah I have some advice @strawberryblue

post in the Property forum .

Instead of spamming AIBU with your “announcement”.

YABU.

Yes sorry we have bought somewhere!

Thank you for all the advice so far keep it coming I'm noting it all down!

Really appreciate it 🥰

Or buy holding furniture second hand

Also if you are wallpapering any room, buy at least 2 more rolls than you think you need. You can always return excess. And make sure they're from the same batch because there can be batch variations.

Don't start any renovation work unless you can complete it to a standard you're happy with or you'll live in a half arsed house for years or worse, you'll do a bad job and hate it.

Misery guts

Sorry @SavoirFlair it didn't get any replies there 🙁 so sorry to bombard you with my announcement 😏

Thank you rest for the very helpful advice! Didn't think of the things you are mentioning! So helpful!

Sort out childcare for moving day and a day or two after if you can.
Set up the kids beds/bedrooms then your bed first.
Label the moving boxes with what room they’re going into, what’s in them and specifically any key things in them eg. Kitchen - crockery (baby bottles) or Utility cupboard - cables and tools (extension cables)
Do not send important paperwork with movers or in a van, keep it with you (passports, birth certs etc).

Same with paint if it's an unusual colour. You do t want t to run out

If you have a garden, don’t pull anything up for a year, or plant anything for a year.

Decide how much you want to invest in it before you start.

Tidy up and move on a couple of years?
Or ‘forever home’ no-expense-spared

and stick to this on every item.

Do the jobs you ‘can’t see’ first. So re-wiring, new plumbing, loft boarding, structural repairs. 100% get rid of any anaglypta, blown vinyl, woodchip ASAP. Hold off on the paint, cushions and wallpaper if any of this needs doing.

If you have lawns ensure you have a lawnmower from moving day (if you don't currently already own a lawnmower that is 😂) keeping the lawn/s tidy from the start will make you feel better and like the garden is managed until you can look at what you want to do with it (also helped us feel we were making a good impression on the neighbours for the front lawn!)

Depending on age of the house etc but expect to do/fix/redecorate more than you expected. We saved money to dedicate to things we knew clearly needed doing when we bought it. Only to move in an discover everything we DIY'd needing doing and then some because a previous owner had done most things the cheap way so we also had to undo their work! Obviously depends on previous owners you know nothing about but good to have an open mind about the extent of DIY.

Like others have said, a lick of paint everywhere, even if it's just magnolia before you decide on a better colour you like. We coated 3 rooms in magnolia and two in white as soon as we could, just so it felt clean and 'ours'.

Keep them coming! Great advice!

We don't think there is much to do but like previous posters said you just don't know.

we are limited on space so any space saving hacks?

Organisational tips?

If you don't already have one, and can afford to get one, highly recommend an ottoman storage bed frame - instantly gives you a load more storage space

Pack some big suitcases with everything you need for yourself and the kids for a few days including some bedding and toys. All toiletries that you need and clothes are a must. Water bottles and plates for the kids. Even tea, coffee and the kettle can go in there. Then when you move you’ll have all the really essential things with you without having to unpack the entire house!

Don't decorate for a year. Take time to see how sunlight falls across the various rooms throughout the day and also across the seasons.

Whenever we are choosing paint and can’t decide between two or three shades, we buy them all plus the tester pots for each. We then use the tester pots to decide what we want and return what’s not right. To me, it’s silly buying 1 tester pot and hating it/repeating etc and then still having to go back and buy the actual pot. Buy buying the tester and the big pot, in theory, you should have to make a maximum of two trips. Hope that makes sense.

If funds allow, get an electrician in to do a full check of the house to make sure nothing was missed on the survey (you might not even have had a full survey) Our electrician discovered that the previous owner bodger had spurred off a live cable from the house to a shed at the bottom of the garden. It couldn’t be seen as it was buried in the grass and he said if we’d mowed over it then we could have been electrocuted! We ended up with a full rewire as the house needed an RCD board, expensive but worth it when I spilled water on my laptop and the house tripped in 0.6 seconds just like he said it would 😆

Test paint on various parts of the wall, so the bits that get direct sunlight and those in the shade. If you're doing different colours in one room, test the paints where they will meet to see if they actually go.

Don't paint the room that gets direct sunlight bright yellow. My kitchen nearly blinded me for a whole year before I admitted i was wrong

Damp sponge on windows and foil will stick as make do curtains.

Have a big tin / box kept in the kitchen for all the random bits that appear that you don't know what they're for or where they should live yet.

Have a huge list on the go of all the things that need sorting just add to it then move on - it's a marathon to sort so don't expect to do all of it in one go.

Keep hand cream handy - my hands were ruined from cleaning / unpacking

Don’t go crazy buying stuff at first.

Take some time to live in the house to figure out how you want use rooms (and how you actually end up using them) and what you need.

For example buying a fancy sofa for one room because you think it will only be used for entertaining only to find out it’s the room everyone ends up eating their cereal and toast in the morning. Or buying a table to set next to the door when a cabinet is needed to store mittens and hats.

These are silly examples but I had one room I thought for sure was going to be a hobby room so that’s how I furnished it…It really ended up being a guest room/home office (pre Covid) so I ended up regretting some of my choices.

This is especially true for things like lamps! And honestly I still have ‘good enough’ short term things that I hate to replace because they’re fine but I would have made different and better choices had I waited a bit.