It's crunch time....

Last Wednesday was the day we'd been waiting for for what seems an eternity - the day the tenders came back from the contractors with prices for the work to our house. We'd been making excited bets between us about how much it would cost. Rachel's were considerably lower than mine.

So when the time came to reveal the prices we'd both underestimated...and then had to add on VAT on top of it. It quite took the wind out of our sails, and for a while it felt like the whole project was sunk without a trace. We took a deep breath, then went through every line of the tender to see how we could bring the price down to something more bearable. An hour later we had something that was about 10% cheaper but still more than we'd hoped. Also, we'd had to ditch some of the nicer touches in the process, like my beloved front garden.

Mr Architect was very patient throughout all of this, and did his best to try and save the situation. He undertook to speak to Mr Builder and see if he could work out anything else. Meanwhile we gave the whole thing some more thought.

So, a few days on and things seem to have become much clearer. Rachel has also talked to her parents and some friends, and the message coming back is "bite the bullet and go for it", which is pretty much the conclusion we'd come to anyway. We're going to get in touch with Mr Architect and sort out a meeting with Mr Builder to talk through things. We've also got Ms Estate Agent coming on Wednesday to give her views on what it might all be worth when finished, but more likely to try and persuade us to sell due to the shortage of Victorian properties in the area. We're pretty sure we're not going to do that.

So it's all starting to move pretty fast. 4 weeks today and we'll have moved into the Outlaws' place at Horton-cum-Cuddle-Me. Yesterday we bought boxes from Big Yellow for packing stuff in, an also some wallpaper stripping tools for doing upstairs. Today we've been looking at kitchens, and have found one we both like. I've also stripped all the ivy off the front wall to see if its worth saving - the jury is still out on that one.