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• You can't always get what you want,
• Just when you though it was safe to go back in the water...
• Drying out
• It never rains but it pours
• The hand that rocks the cradle
• Career advice for the uninitiated.
• When the going gets tough...
• Would you Adam & Eve it?
• Reality Bites
• Buy two get one fee!
• The withdrawal method
• Home coming
• A tale of two cities
• Manchester and The CPO
• The rise of the text sick note, and the email rent avoidance excuse.
• The best laid plans of Mice and Men - and slugs named Nigel
• Mancunian madness
• The story so far

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The cost of property developing

By Hapless Investor

Autumn-ish time we got the keys to our Manchester money pit. This was the first time The Boyfriend had got to see the property and seeing it in the middle of the night following a 5 hour drive in a car full of furniture, paint and everything else you can think of was probably not the most favourable time to see it but he was as enthusiastic as I was.

With the £2000 discount we had finally negotiated still jangling in our pockets we set about transforming the tired building into a habitable home. Having watched Changing Rooms and things like that we knew full well that we need to neutralise the colour scheme. Although the plan was for us to live there sometimes you can't see the wood for the trees when faced with 1970s paisley décor.  A large mirror was hung above the fire place, new fires were installed, new appliances for the kitchen, pot plants for the garden. We had a damp specialist to come in, we had a shower fitted, and arranged for a new boiler and central heating system to be fitted.

Over the course of five weeks we started to transform the house into a home. Perhaps not in the smartest of ways, everything was from the Argos catalogue and Currys. All the workmen were found by sticking a pin in the Yellow Pages.

We were phenomenally limited for time as we were both in full time jobs and so could only work on the house at the weekends and the five hour drive on a Friday night meant that we were dead on our feet by then.

It began to feel like we had given up our lives doing this. We were both working full time jobs and all of our free time felt like it was taken up by the house. Not only when we were there but even when we weren't. All our conversations felt like they revolved around the house and jobs that needed doing there. My lunchtimes were spent getting quotes from plumbers, my evenings spent wandering around B&Q, and even when I wasn't actively doing anything house related I was still thinking about it. What colour scheme should I use? What type of handles would work there? Do I really need to replace the whole kitchen or just the doors? 24/7 my mind was occupied by the house.

To a certain extent it felt like that scene in 4 weddings and a funeral where Simon Callow claims that people only get married because they'd run out of conversation.

The surprising thing was how much pressure this put on my relationship. Rightly or wrongly, I felt that I was doing everything. Every decision seemed to come down to me. Every judgement call was mine. I was responsible for driving up there. I was responsible for trying to find the last 4* petrol stations in the country, and I was even responsible for loading the car up with all the things we needed.

Tensions between The Boyfriend and me escalated. The atmosphere at home was frosty at best, and the long car journeys were filled with such heavily pregnant silences it felt like a Scientology maternity ward. And as the time went on hostilities grew to the worst they'd ever been, I mean, even the fighting in WW1 stopped for Christmas. I knew I was using him as a verbal punch bag and I knew that my friends and family were right when they said that if I kept piling all the crap on him I was on the fast road to divorce.

As much as I could name at least 20,000 things I was frustrated and cross about I'm not stupid. Despite the fact that all the annoyances were legitimate what I was doing was masking my real concerns. What I was really worried about was constantly nagging at the back of my mind, the overriding thought that ran through absolutely everything: are we doing the right thing? Am I going to lose everything doing this?

Although to everyone out there the combined budget of £30,000 isn't much. Heck a new car costs more than that. But it was money I didn't have and as such it was all the money in the world. I have always been relatively risk adverse and the idea of extending the mortgage on my home to pay for this really went against the grain.

However by the New Year we had finished most of the work. The house was ready to live in. Peace had broken out again. We had tenants lined up for our London house and all we needed to do was chuck in our jobs, hire a moving van and Hasta la Vista Baby.

Then came the job offer and the dog eared bit of paper and everything changed again.

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