did i put my foot in it when i bid it on a house that i'd never seen or would it all work out
before i show you the house what it looks like before we start work i want to show you what the
house looked like before we bought it and explain why we got into a situation where we were bidding
on a house where we'd never seen it i need to take it back to may 2020 ireland was in lockdown
and viewings weren't allowed the house had gone sale agreed i think at 425 000 but fell out of
bed during covet and came back onto the market during lockdown at the time viewings weren't
allowed and no one really knew what was going to happen to the market once it opened up again
and there was a lot of predictions that property prices would crash we knew the area really well
and we knew we were going to go to property so we made an offer at 390 000 without seeing the
property we made the offer on the condition that it was accepted quickly before the market reopened
we were taking a little bit of a gamble because it was 35 000 below the asking price
after a few weeks of negotiation we finally agreed at 3.95 we went into legals quickly but
we discovered that there was probate issues along with title issues and there was no clear timeline
we waited around for some time but it came to august in 2020 and we had moved no further in
the legals so we decided we were going to have to pull out because at the time we were considering
other options and we were also considering moving to new york so we pulled out of the sale but later
in the year in november 2020 we met with the same agent at another property and we asked them what
was the status of the property we originally put a bid on and when sale agreed on he informed us that
it had gone sale agreed however he felt it was going to fall out of bed again we let him know
at that time that if it did fall out of bed we were willing to close quickly and sign contracts
quickly at a price of 370 000 and we were willing to take any kind of time delays associated with
the property as well as cleaning up the legal title issues about a week later the agent did
inform us that the sale had fallen through and the vendor would consider an offer from us we stuck
at our guns at 370 and a few weeks later we had a deal this deal was 55 000 lower than the original
sale agreed or asking price we signed the contracts at the end of december 2020 and
we headed off to new york knowing that probate was going to take some time probably did take a long
time and we finally closed the deal eight months later in august 2021. we had an agreement in place
with the vendor that we could apply for planning permission before closing so we had submitted
a planning application to extend out the rear before we actually closed and we were lucky enough
to get full planning permission in october 2021 i will show you plans for that extension later on
that takes us up to right now we have a tender pack completed and it has been issued to a number
of contractors hopefully those tenders don't come in too expensive and we can appoint a
contractor very quickly so make sure you actually subscribe to the channel because i will update
you guys on the progress of the property as we go so let's take a walk through on what
the property looks like right now i was lucky enough that my father did scrape off some of the
wallpaper as well as remove a lot of the carpets and everything else that was in the property
so i'll give you a quick tour and let you know what we plan to do with the house
plan to actually break up this door is one of the first things we're going to be doing into our this
will be our sitting room we'll be keeping the fire breast but we will be changing the fireplace we'll
be knocking through this wall here so we will be blocking that one up but we'll be knocking through
this wall creating pocket doors large pocket doors into what will be our dining room so we
will go down and this will be our dining room we will be knocking this wall and creating kind of a
door element here that's sliding doors and then it will be a little bit more open plan we're going to
take this fireplace out i'm not sure if you can see in the video but it is quite thick there's a
huge amount of space within this room taken up by this fireplace so we're going to take that all out
and then we're going to be knocking this down and extending out into the back garden for our
kitchen so this will be our dining room and i'll bring it out to what is currently the kitchen and
bathroom this will all be actually changed and different stairs is all going to change this
will be down into a second bathroom eventually but this will all changes was an extension to put on
at some point kitchen and bathroom at the back not in the greatest conditions but
someone was living here at one stage but all of this is being knocked down and we will be doing
a double height extension and i'll show you plans of that at some stage but our extension
is going to come out here these outhouses which are one bathroom and this is an old coal shed
full of spider webs not going in there right now a lot of spider webs but that was an old cold
[ __ ] coal ship at one point so all of this is being knocked all that will be knocked and then
we're bringing the house out at single story uh one side on this side but it will be double height
on this side for a bathroom and that traditional bathroom up top so let's go check out upstairs
so the house is pretty old and there is some structural issues in it which
we kind of knew about at the stage when we were purchasing it and um
obviously i've taken some of the plaster work off but that was a great health in terms of stripping
i suppose all the carpet or in the hall and taking layers and layers of wallpaper off the walls
so we can see what the plaster work was like we're going to end up probably replacing nearly all the
plaster this is going to be blown out and this will be our new bathroom that will go all the way
out i'll show you the plans we've got a really cool skylight in the bathroom over the shower
which would be really nice to see there is a structural issue here which again we knew
about and it is the little bit of separation and there's this tiny bit of bowing but nothing major
for a properties of this age so we're not too worried about it
this is into it's a three bedroom house so this is going to be one of the bedrooms it's going to be
a little bit smaller because we're gonna take about to about here we're gonna take that off
because we wanna rearrange the access here into two to three bedrooms because
one of the bedrooms is currently accessed through this bedroom as you'll see here and that's
not ideal for us as i mentioned downstairs we're taking the fireplace out uh just below this room
so we're going to take this fireplace as well to give us a little bit more room which will be kind
of the master bedroom we're going to take the roof off as well and create some skylights in this room
we're looking out onto the old kevin street dit which just has been knocked and i don't mind that
at all it's going to be built up as apartments hotels and lots of other stuff uh we're lucky
enough that we're not going to be too overlooked by the new development so i don't mind that being
done it's going to be a lot nicer than what was there in the past so into this bedroom
which we're going to call kevin's bedroom but this one is this fireplace is going to remain
we're going to fix it up and we're going to fix that fireplace up and we will be rearranging
it a little bit and in terms of putting a new door there hence why we're taking off
and we're going to change the layout of the hall or the landing up here
we're actually going to hopefully push this will be a little bit bigger probably an extra two or
three feet wider this direction and what we're hoping to do is put in our washer dryer here
and a cool kind of unit that we've discovered in america that helps with drying clothes like a
standing drying rack a heated standard drying rack as you can see like there's a decent amount of
height within the ceilings here which we're going to try to open up and we will have a huge skylight
here as well and um that will be the battery which we're looking for so get going we are delighted
with the property we are really excited about the project itself but one of the major benefits
from the location as well is the property is just on the edge and located within the living
city scheme in dublin and therefore we will be able to get some tax credits on the refurbishment
work that we do as promised i did say i would share the designs of the project so here they are
as mentioned we are extending out the rear it's single story on one level and two stories
on part it's very open plan on the downstairs there will be lots of pocket doors that we can
close off some areas if required there is a new downstairs bathroom which will be hidden there
the kitchen is going to be very bright because there's a large roof light above the kitchen
and we also have a hidden small office within the kitchen which i'm really looking forward to
i think it was going to be an amazing little small space for me then when we go upstairs upstairs on
the return there will be a new bathroom which will have a lovely bright roof light just over
the shower so that will be an interesting concept to have upstairs there will be tree
bedrooms and again we're bringing a lot of light into the main room with a large roof light as well
as i said tenders are out and we are hoping to get some reasonable quotes back in make sure
you subscribe to the channel to follow on this journey over the next six months because i will
update progress as we go we are delighted with the property we're delighted with the location
we have a lot of friends in the area and we really love living close to the city centre
if you do want to know more about this project and content make sure you like the video subscribe to
the channel and leave comments below any ideas are welcome to i love hearing from you guys