House Hunting made easier!
We have been house hunting over the last few months and I’d just like to share a few tips with you from an interior designer and architectural designer’s point of view when it comes to assessing the house from the inside.
Tip One: Don’t be fooled by great interior decorating. Close your eyes and imagine all the furniture and artwork, decorations, floor rugs removed and then picture your furniture in the same room. How good does it look now?
Tip Two: In today’s modern world we need power outlets or sockets everywhere, especially in the living room, kitchen, bedrooms and garage. Check that there are enough. You don’t want to have to use multi boxes and overload your electrical system, or upgrade it, it can become costly very quickly.
Tip Three: Open and shut everything. Sounds crazy but it will drive you insane once you move in to find that the window in your bedroom won’t open, or worse still won’t close once you have opened it!
Tip Four: Turn on all the faucets or taps, check out the water pressure. There is nothing worse than being used to a high pressure shower in the morning to wake you up, then find you now have a lovely trickle of a low pressure system shower.
Tip Five: Make sure the hot water cylinder is large enough for you and your family, you don’t want to get caught short of hot water. Especially if you are the last to shower in the family!
Tip Six: Stand in the kitchen and pretend to prepare a meal, move around it, get the feel of it, does it feel comfortable, is there enough bench space, storage, room for your refrigerator, microwave, appliances? You spend a lot of time in the kitchen, so if it doesn’t work well or has major flaws that can’t easily be resolved, then do your sums. It can add on quite a bit of money if you have to buy new appliances to fit into your new kitchen, or make joinery or cabinetry alterations.
Tip Seven: Make sure if it is a family home that you have at least two WC’s or toilets. We just stayed at a home with a single WC in the bathroom, my husband was in the shower with the door locked and one of the children was “busting”. Not a good scenario to be in, but a good reminder of what a family needs when looking for a new home.
Tip Eight: Don’t be fooled by a fresh paint job and color scheme. Look deeper, the house may feel instantly clean and tidy, but imagine yourself doing the housework. The paint job usually means that you forget to look at the condition of the flooring, so remember to look down and around.
Tip Nine: Interior decorating can disguise many undesirable features, curtains are a great example of this, open up the curtains or blinds and check out the view or lack of! Check that you bedroom window is not on the street boundary of a busy road for everyone to look in and the noise to keep you awake at night.
Tip Ten: Stop take a seat and listen. Is it quiet? Should it be due to it’s location, does the neighbors drive way go right next to the children’s rooms and they have teenage kids with cars that come and go all night?
These are a few things that we have come across and want to share with you. Some maybe relevant, others not, but it gets you thinking about the house, apartment or flat, what ever you may be searching for. Don’t be bamboozled by great interior decorating, look deeper as you will always add your own interior decorating flair when you move in anyway.
What I am expressing is to make sure you check out the bones of the house and then you can make it look beautiful and your own once you move in if you have a good structure to work with.
Happy House Hunting!
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It is easy to get so overwhelmed with the interior design of the house, that pay very little attention to the ceiling. Look up to see if you can see any water marks. It there are, question th eagent or get it checked out, it could be a leak due to faulty plumbing.