Have you ever wondered what happens after you sell a property?
Did it ever occur to you what the new owners might do?
Would you actually want to buy it back?
I don’t know how it came about, but Hubby suddenly discovered The Cottage was back on the market.
The price tag was breathtaking………………. almost £200,000, and we sold it in 2014 for £134,000, losing a lot of money.
We’ve driven past on a couple of occasions and noticed the garage had been replaced, and that there was a bigger chimmo, but other than that, the place looked the same.
If we had been able to pick it up and put it somewhere else, we may have, but with 2 reception rooms, conservatory and 3 bedrooms, it was too big for us really, and the garden was getting too much. Add to that the RAF flying over all day, and not being able to have the windows open in the summer because of traffic noise or harvesting dusts, well, you get the picture.
One thing is certain, we left the cottage in a far better state than when we bought it in 2007 for the sum of £160,000, and invested around £30,000 with new double glazing, oil boiler and plumbing for central heating, new kitchen, new floors and a complete overhaul of decor inside.
The dining room was red and like walking into a blood clot, the kitchen a mess, bathroom peacock blue with black and silver tiles, lounge green, front bedroom bright yellow (you needed sunglasses), second bedroom purple and the main bedroom terracotta. It was like the Changing Rooms team had been given free rein with pots of paint, and the damp issue was pretty severe. No doors (or door knobs for that matter) matched anywhere throughout the property, and we discovered a roof problem within the first year so had to have the gable removed and front retiled.
The property was originally the old school and built in 1867, so when we started to decorate, we tried to be sympathetic to the age, and we believe brought a charm to the property with linseed oiled woodwork and pine doors, plain walls in magnolia or white, and a log burner in the lounge. It was home, it was cosy, and we thought welcoming.
OMG. What have they done to it??
What was the dining room is now a kitchen…… totally modern and out of character with the age of the property (IMO), and the new chimmo is to accommodate a range cooker.
What was our kitchen is now a dining room, which backs onto the conservatory we had which has been converted to a utility room. The decor is ice blue woodwork and cupboards, and looks horrible. Also we could see no dining table, just a load of cupboards on both sides, and the worktops we put in.
The walk in pantry we made had been removed so as to gain access into the ‘dining room’ but what was our scullery (and entrance to the kitchen as we had it) has been blocked off at one end so that they could fit cupboards along that wall. ‘Our scullery’ has now been converted to a pantry with access as originally from the inner hallway.
The pine doors have been painted and the lounge stripped of the wood we lovingly cut and linseed oiled, and now cold blue like the dining room. The drawer units in the alcove have replaced our floor to ceiling book shelves.
The front bedroom hasn’t got a bed in it, just a double wardrobe at one end, sofa (probably a sofabed) and a couple of dressers. The second bedroom is more or less as we left it, but there was no picture of the main bedroom. They have added another conservatory to the patio doors off the lounge.
The biggest and most gross change has been the bathroom.
It now has black floor and wall tiles, a white vanity sink and loo, double shower cubicle, and a free standing white bath with claw feet. It looks like a designer couldn’t make up their mind and nothing ‘fits’.
Outside, the two sheds are still there, but there is a new garage and chalet along the boundary adjacent to the village hall.
Everyone has their own tastes, but if we were viewing the property now as potential buyers, we would not touch it. It is cold and uninviting, and has no charm at all.
Good luck to the new owners. Unless they have triple glazed the windows, the noise from the aircraft will still drown out conversation and their TV. The boy racers will still scream past the windows at 70 mph as there is seven miles of straight road which runs through the village and they cannot resist, and at harvest or muck spreading time, you can forget putting your washing out.
You can never go back, and in this case, we wouldn’t want to.
pensitivity101 
I went back once to a house I spent a lot of loving time tending, and it was such a shock that I won’t ever do it again. Sometimes, it’s better to not know, to keep the memories clean of ‘new’.
We were curious, and all I can say is OUCH!!!
Looks like you are better off not returning there.
It was no longer a home Lauren. Too cold and clinical.
I get that.
Sounds horrid!! It needs to be completely gutted by the sound of it. Sorry you had to see that. I planted a really lovely mostly perennial garden in one of the houses I owned. I had lots and lots of deep almost oxblood tulips and white daffodils. It was a small front garden and while there were a few other things going on, they were a focus. It was pretty unstructured and free flowing and people used to leave notes in my mailbox saying how much they liked it. And when I sold it the first thing the new owner did was rip it up. I also had a lovely Japanese maple in the back garden I’d planted which she also got rid of. She invited me back to see what she’d done and when I saw the garden I wanted to hang myself.
My grandfather’s wife’s son ripped out all his rose bushes when he died. I couldn’t visit. The idea of making the dining room a kitchen isn;t actualy a bad idea, but the result is IMO horrible. The kitchen was long and skinny, so not really dining room material, but they still have the floor cupboards and worktops as we left them, so I can’t see how that works. But everything was so cold looking. It had no soul (bit like the people who bought it actually, they were not very nice and led us a terrible dance when we sold it).
We got the opportunity to see our old house that we bought right after we got married. It was built in 1923. They had repainted the exterior from a light grey with country blue trim on the porch rail and floor – now it is a hideous pink with a nearly blinding purple trim. The inside is a mess. We took out royal blue carpet and redid the hard wood floors in the living room/dining room. They put linoleum down that imitates parquet floor. They removed all the cherry wood built-in cupboard/dry sink in the kitchen and replaced it with laminate cabinets in a ghastly forest green. We smiled and then left… I had to keep repeating “not my circus, not my monkey”!
We checked on our other properties which had equally astounding price tags, but none were on the market, so have no idea what they’ve done inside.
Well, it sounds awful! So cold and uninviting! At least you have your cosy bungalow now! Its your new home!
They’ve stripped away the character we so tried to retain. Still, it was their home since 2014, so maybe they don’t like it!!