Meet the Other Phone. Protection built in.

Meet the Other Phone.
Protection built in.

Buy now

Please or to access all these features

Property/DIY

Join our Property forum for renovation, DIY, and house selling advice.

Found my dream house, in my dream road, at the right price, BUT.....

12 replies

snackattack · 29/08/2009 15:37

it has a tiny garden - well tiny-ish - about 35 ft but in a triangle shape. I absolutely LOVE the house- it has 5 double beds, 2 baths, a massive kitchen/diner with conservatory, a separate office, a playroom and it's in my dream location. We can JUST ABOUT afford it if we pull out all the stops but the garden is really disappointing. I can live with it to be honest, my kids are growing up and it's big enough for my youngest one's trampoline and plenty of space for outside eating/barbecues. Dh also loves the house but is also probably more disppointed than me about the garden. He thinks the house would be hard to sell because of it if we ever needed to move. However, I've been saying that it's the house we spend the majority of our time in and the area is really absolutely perfect and in the catchment of an excellent school. Is this compromise worth it or am I dreaming and will it be an issue in the long run?? thoughts welcomed!

OP posts:
noddyholder · 29/08/2009 15:46

I don't think it will be that hard to sell if you can fit a trampoline!

BlueKangerooWonders · 29/08/2009 15:54

Go for it! Sounds perfect.

Lizzylou · 29/08/2009 15:56

If it has enough indoor space, I would go for it.
To be honest, living in Lancashire as I do the chances of getting outside are very limited anyway
If YOU are interested, chances are someone else would be if you needed/wanted to sell in future.

MaggieLeo · 29/08/2009 15:56

Don't think about reselling it. Would you be able to live with it with a small garden?

I'm not that bothered about gardens tbh. Too much work. I like room for table and chairs of course.

I'd decorate the garden like a swanky roof terrace.

Itsjustafleshwound · 29/08/2009 15:56

If it has all the space (barring the garden) that you need, in the right area and affordable, I would be able to overlook the garden issue - gardens don't sell houses - room space and location do ...

pasturesnew · 29/08/2009 15:59

It sounds worth it to me, so long as the garden is big enough for entertaining and some outdoor toys it will always be attractive to families looking in that school catchment area.

snackattack · 29/08/2009 16:00

Yes Maggie - I had thought that we could really look at the garden creatively and make it quite "interesting" then this should not detract from the rest of the house...

OP posts:
EyeballsintheSky · 29/08/2009 16:02

We have a big garden and it's a PITA. Wish we had just enough for a slide for dd and two chairs and a small table. Anything bigger needs too much time and effort.

MaggieLeo · 29/08/2009 16:04

yes, do the garden like a penthouse apartment balcony.

When I look at a garden, I see gardening

GrendelsMum · 29/08/2009 20:36

When you say 35 feet, do you mean 35 feet from the apex of the triangle to the back wall of the conservatory, or 35 feet square, i.e. 6 ft by 6ft ?

You're saying it's big enough for people to have a barbeque, and for a trampoline, so I guess you mean 35 feet deep to the apex of the triangle.

Is the garden really so small, or is it just badly designed?

Often, bad garden design emphasises the edges and walls of a garden, which makes the garden look much smaller than it is. This is especially the case with small gardens - people put the emphasis on growing things up the walls, which means that you look at the wall, not at the space between the walls.

You can really have an astonishing impact on the feeling of the space by re-designing the garden layout.

I'd go for the house, and get a professional garden designer to design the garden. If you can't afford a professional garden designer, ask on here! Off-hand (and depending on kids ages), I think that the thing to do would be to put the trampoline right at the tip of the triangle, and to have large plants in front of this forming a green wall (perhaps bamboos), so that from the house, you can see there is more garden, but you can't see how far it goes or what it is. You can even put a garden mirror on the far fence opposite to the gap in the 'wall', so that from the main house the garden appears to go on and on. Then you put a lot of tall, colourful flowers in a border in front of the green wall, so that the eye is drawn to those, and then have your terrace going from the house to the flower border.

Northernlurker · 30/08/2009 00:08

If the house is good - and it sounds great then this sounds like a compromise worth making to me. We don't have a huge garden either but the house was perfect for us and realistically the garden is as big as we could cope with anyway. In our city big gradens are hard to come by in the location we wanted anyway. Maybe it's the same round your way?

fanjolina · 31/08/2009 10:30

Definitely go for it

New posts on this thread. Refresh page