What was that one compromise?

[Fancypants2022]

when buying your house - what was the one compromise you made? Mine was accessing the kitchen through the lounge. My last house has this and I was hoping to avoid it. It was great in every other way (apart from being a bit small!!) - is there one thing you gave in on in order to get the house?

If you’re into mountain biking or fell walking then East Anglia never going to excite you.

No utility room. I had my machines in our large porch at our old house. New house has big driveway and garage and 2 lounges but no utility. Washing machine in kitchen, tumble dryer in garage and now barely use it!

Turns out I'm not as bothered as I thought I would be 🤷🏻‍♀️

My house remains the best one we could have afforded but the compromises were:

• busier road than I would have liked (it’s a “busy twice a day” kind of road)
• unappealingly rendered, rather than the lovely Victorian brick underneath that the rest of the houses on the road have
• small kitchen but we have planning to reconfigure the back of the house, after which it’ll be dreamy
• original features mainly gone - we’ve replaced 1 horrid electric fire for a period replacement but that’s the tip of the iceberg.
• NE facing garden but that’s fine because there’s a field behind it not houses so it does get lots of sun.
• top of our budget so we’ve had to budget carefully to afford renovations

My MIL expressed disappointment on our behalf that it was a semi saying “it’s just a shame it’s attached”. But we live in London so having a big semi with all the space we have is amazing - not sure what she was expecting us to have really. It’s halls-adjoining and I couldn’t even get the slightest bit worked up about it being a semi.

I specifically said I don't want to live in a bungalow with plastic windows. Guess what we bought😂
Big garden, plenty of space to park, decent space between next door properties. Only 2 neighbours really, fields behind and bottom of someone's extremely large garden in front. It was the right decision

Our house had been a holiday home. It's in a wonderful location and a great place for holidaying, but the house itself has lots of drawbacks - no storage space and lots of very steep stairs being the worst. But the lovely big garden and the fabulous views make up for it.

A relatively busy rural road
No utility room
Small hallway

but the house is completely unique (a converted historic building) and local landmark, has amazing features and an acre of land.

North-facing garden.

Our current house ticked all our boxes. It’s a modestly sized stone barn conversion ‘on the edge of one of the most highly sought-after villages in the county’, as Estate Agents like to say. It’s lovely and semi-rural and we are lucky. Our current neighbours are beef cattle, fattening up on the summer pasture.

The only problem is the garden, which is small and faces north so we don’t get the sun in the afternoons. It’s usually too cool to dine outside, even in summer. Conversely, the south facing living room & front bedroom bake in the sun all day and can feel like saunas. It’s the worst of both worlds.