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Can we have our stamp duty back please?SO, the Prime Minister has announced that he's frozen stamp duty for a year. Nice one Gordon. Go to the top of the class and give out the rulers. ... (02/09/2008)
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Free loft insulation? I've got a better idea...THIS afternoon a letter from the council floated on to our doormat offering us a substantial grant to insulate our house. ... (26/08/2008)
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What I think of canal boat holidays...I COULD give you a dozen reasons why you should never, ever, go on a canal boat holiday... (02/09/2008)
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The pitter-patter of tiny feet LIZZY and I are delighted to announce the arrival of Ferdinand, weighing around four pounds, and mother and baby rabbit are doing fine. ... (04/08/2008)
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Recycling... It's a load of rubbish!CONTRARY to popular belief, it takes a lot to wind me up. But the other morning, I found myself getting annoyed at our letterbox. ... (31/07/2008)
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It's a jungle out there...RECENTLY, our house has been suffering a little from what I like to refer to as "forced neglect". ... (21/07/2008)
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Recession? What recession?YOU might think that as a new homeowner the credit crunch would be a cause for concern to me, but actually I'm not that bothered. ... (09/07/2008)
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Counting down to the summer holidaysAS i've said before in one of these blogs, finding the time to actually sit back and enjoy owning a house has been one of the hardest things. ... (02/09/2008)
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Don't take your mother for grantedMY MOTHER doubtless told me this at some point, but keeping a house is like painting the Firth-of-Forth bridge. ... (02/09/2008)
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Why I despise public transportI'VE always lived by a simple philosophy of avoiding public transport as if it was on fire. Which it sometimes is. ...(04/08/2008)
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The cold snap's all my faultQUITE why I'm having to put my heating on in the last half of May is beyond me - I even had to bring in our new olive tree the other night because the weather-man thought it was going to be frosty. ... (30/07/2008)
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It's settling in that takes the timeTHERE'S all sorts of things we need to do in our house, to recover from the chaos of moving in, but the main problem we're struggling with is trying to find time to enjoy the place.... (30/07/2008)
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Doing battle with the central heatingI'M no luddite. I can format a computer's hard drive, I have a vague understanding of HTML code (don't ask) and I can even programme a VHS recorder. But the heating controls in our new house are driving me mad. ... (30/07/2008)
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We're proper homeowners - at last!MY arms are sore, my legs hurt, my friends hate me, but at least I have a fabulous new house - even if it is full of cardboard boxes. ... (02/09/2008)
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We're in and words fail me...PERHAPS I'm exposing one or two of my shortcomings as a journalist, but I'm finding it impossible to put in to words the feeling of moving in to your first ever home. It's amazing. ... (30/07/2008)
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Friday's the day....I WAS walking to a sandwich shop, oddly, when I finally got the phone call we've been waiting for for more than eight weeks. ... (02/09/2008)
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Getting ready to live out of cardboard boxesWELL, I forget how many weeks this whole process has taken, but yesterday we drove to the solicitor's to sign the contracts! The end is in sight! ... (02/09/2008)
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It's taken three weeks for them to do nothingSORRY I've not updated the blog for a while, but there's really been nothing to tell.The last three arduous weeks have been spent waiting for responses to a question that, in the end, we managed to answer ourselves. ... (02/09/2008)
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We're so very nearly there...WE'RE now six weeks in to the house buying process, and we're finally pulling ourselves out of the unexpected rut we seemed to have inadvertantly fallen in to. ... (02/09/2008)
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Mystery of the disappearing vendorsFIVE weeks in and we've hit a rather strange stumbling block. Our vendors have disappeared. ... (02/09/2008)
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What Shell gives with one hand the home-buying process takes away with the other...YESTERDAY I received £45 worth of Argos vouchers in the post. It was a reward for saving bucket-loads of points with Shell. And I was chuffed with it. ... (02/09/2008)
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It's never as simple as you'd thinkTHE other day we realised that Sunday, March 9 would mark four weeks exactly since our offer was accepted and the process of buying our first ever house officially got off the ground. ... (02/09/2008)
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Time to trim down our costsMUCH of the past week or so has been spent capitalising on any bit of idle time I get to ring around companies and cancel things - in preparation for committing such a significant chunk of my income on a mortgage and bills. ... (02/09/2008)
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It's pretty much out of our handsTHINGS have slowed down quite a bit since my last blog entry and, to a large extent, everything's out of our hands. ... (02/09/2008)
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And the bills start coming inWHEN you start out buying a house, it's easy to be narrow-minded about how much you're going to have think about, the amount you'll end up spending and the sheer consequences of getting something wrong. ... (02/09/2008)
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The beginning of the process...WELCOME to my first ever blog, which I plan to make my regular journal as I venture into a stressful and expensive journey many people my age are tentatively stepping towards... I'm buying my first ever house. ... (02/09/2008)
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ASHBOURNE News Telegraph reporter Gareth Butterfield and his girlfriend Lizzy are now settling in to their new home in Hatton.
The 28-year-old decided it was time to move out of his mother's house and find something more spacious than the bedroom he and Lizzy were sharing. In his blog, he highlights the pitfalls and perils faced by a first time buyer and tells the story of his first tentative steps on to the housing ladder, and what it's like to own his first ever home. 
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