The Great Escape - we have a landing

And a hall, stairs, bathroom, all the usual features of a house!

Yes, we've found the house that will be Carls' new home and our temporary staging post on our way to living on board.

It's a good old fashioned Victorian terrace in a quiet side street just five minutes walk from Kettering town centre. The layout is basically typical "two up, two down" with a kitchen extension to the rear but unusually the extension is two storey with the bathroom above the kitchen and a single story utility room beyond the bathroom complete with downstairs loo (most properties of this type have a downstairs bathroom beyond the single storey kitchen extension)

There's a small garden to the rear with an outbuilding and a side alley shared with the next door neighbour.

The alley is a major plus point as it avoids having to drag wheelie bins through the house

The outbuilding is interesting and gives a clue to the history of the street. It's one of a back to back range of outbuildings that extend the whole length of the street and the parallel street beyond

Internally, it has a small storage area beyond the door where I suspect there may have originally been the toilet (or "ootside netty" as we'd have called it back home in Sunderland) which may not have been served by mains sewerage. The rest of the building is very well constructed in brick and there is even a small fireplace in the back left corner, now blocked up. The biggest clue is the large window which floods the room with light

Put that into the context of Kettering being second only to Northampton in the Victorian shoe trade and it's very likely that the houses were built for shoe trade outworkers

(The "lawn" will have to go though!)

Internally, the house is in good decorative order (although the decor wouldn't, to be honest, be what we or Carl would choose but redecorating can be left until time, money and inclination are available). It isn't large, the house we looked at earlier in the week was bigger inside but it's big enough

There's no off road parking but that would have been too much to hope for. The on street parking is residents permit only though which is a plus as it means the street isn't used by people working in the town centre trying to escape paying for all day parking.

We elected to offer the asking price given the way properties are selling like hot cakes. This house had only been listed the previous afternoon and whilst we'd got in first on it there were several viewings booked to follow us. Carl has the mortgage arranged all bar the final paperwork, I'll instruct the solicitors by email today and get the paperwork to them tomorrow and if all goes well I see no reason we can't have everything done and dusted before Christmas (and I'll be kicking the solicitors up the bottom on a regular basis to make sure the process moves along swiftly!

The time rapidly approaches when we can start the search for Bigger Boat in earnest :)