Change of plans!

We get the keys to our new place on January 3rd and can move in straight away, but it's not to the house on Calas del Pinar, it's to another villa where we live now.

Over the last few years my Dad had always joked with me and Neil about making sure any house we bought had a 'granny flat' so that he could come and live with us in his old age and we could look after him. Although this was always said in jest, we always made serious consideration to this possibility and both the last house in Sheffield and the one on Calas were suitable to be adapted for my Dad to move in and maintain his own space, should that be necessary.

After coming back from Dad's funeral in August, suddenly the house we were buying here didn't fit what we needed and after a few weeks of this little niggle at the back of my mind I mentioned it to Neil to discover he had been thinking the same. So we had a good discussion about where we would look to buy if we were just coming over now and suddenly the house on the Calas del Pinar development didn't meet our needs.

Having checked our contractual position and having a chat with our solicitior we made the decision a few weeks ago that we would not continue with our purchase, that we would rent for a further year and look to buy somewhere towards the end of next year.

Having made this decision, we then slept on it and had another talk the following morning, had a drive down to look at the house we would have been buying and both felt we had made the right decision not to continue. The houses themselves are still very good houses, they are finished off really well and have good sized rooms for Spanish houses, and are within walking distance of all the bars, the sea front and the shops - but it wasn't what we were looking for now anymore.

What I did want though was the extra room a property with 3 bedrooms would give us. The villa we have been in since we got here has been lovely but the kitchen is too small for 2 people to work in together and we have found that frustrating and, when people come out to stay I lose my work space so, we have found a 3 bed villa on the same development (actually on the next street) and we get the keys to that on January 3rd. We will then spend a few days moving our stuff round there and getting the rest of our belongings back from storage. We're really looking forward to seeing what we have in storage as we can't remember what we have in there other than our new bed.

We won't have a pool at the new villa, again we were never intending to have a pool of our own. You only get to use them for about 12-14 weeks a year from mid-June to mid-September. Unless you have a heated pool, the rest of the year the water is too cool. However, we have got our Hot Tub being delivered the 2nd week in January and I am really excited about that. We can use that all year round and in the summer use it as a plunge pool to stay cool. This way we will know by next autumn whether a pool is a 'must have' or not when we are looking at places to live.

Several weeks after making the decision not to buy just yet, having found a new place to rent for a year and looking forward to getting all our possessions from storage we are both happy that we have made the right decision for us - and at the end of the day, that's all that matters!