WE BACKED OUT OF BUYING OUR DREAM HOME. HERE’S THE FULL STORY!
My 2025 moodboard including some of my images as well as ones found on Pinterest.
My word of the year for 2025 is CHANGE…
After feeling stuck for most of 2024 - stuck in my routine, my business, and honestly, my own head - I knew something had to radically shift. I didn’t want to coast through another year feeling uninspired. I wanted to feel different. I wanted to feel alive.
Change, of course, can look like a million different things. For me, the first bold move was one I’d been avoiding for decades: embracing my natural hair. After over 20 years of blowdrying it straight, my curls made their comeback - wild, unapologetic, and completely me.
But that wasn’t enough change for me, I craved MORE. So, I created a moodboard to channel my focus for the year ahead, and one theme kept resurfacing with a vengeance: home. So, after nearly 14 years in our beloved 1930s cottage, we took a deep breath, listed it for sale, and made an offer on our dream Edwardian semi.
2025 was shaping up to be INCREDIBLE…
more life, less room
It’s not that we weren’t happy in our home - we truly were. But as life evolved, so did our needs. When we first purchased our property, I was working as an adoption social worker, my son was a toddler, and the cosy 2.5 bedrooms suited us perfectly.
Fast forward a few years, and everything changed. My photography business took off, and soon our spare bedroom was overflowing with props before officially being transformed into my full-time office / photography and content creation studio. The kitchen became a daily frustration, especially when juggling food photography shoots with limited fridge space. On top of that, my husband began working from home twice a week, and our once-little boy grew into a tall teenager who’d completely outgrown his bedroom. Suddenly, our beloved home wasn’t just snug, it was bursting at the seams.
If you’ve ever felt like your home no longer fits your life, you’re not alone. It’s a natural part of life’s evolution. And while moving felt like the obvious solution, I couldn’t help but ask myself: was a house move really the change I craved… or was it something deeper?
The Moment I Started Second-Guessing our move
After the initial excitement of potentially upgrading to a home twice the size of our current place, doubts quietly started creeping in and that felt odd to me. I’ve always been a decisive person. I knew six weeks into my relationship with my now-husband that I wanted to marry him, and we bought our current home after a single viewing, standing in the hallway without a second thought. Big life decisions have never been something I’ve agonised over, so why did this one feel different?
It’s hard to point to one single reason why we ultimately pulled out of the sale, but there was one undeniable factor that tipped the scales….money!
THE HIDDEN COSTS OF MOVING!
Yes, a bigger house comes with a bigger mortgage, but it was the extra expenses that made us pause. Between the increased mortgage payments, added interest rates, eye-watering stamp duty (taxes UK home owners pay when selling their property), and the inevitable renovation projects, we were staring down a substantial six-figure sum. And that wasn’t even factoring in the higher day-to-day running costs of a larger property.
Technically, it was a financial stretch we could manage. But doing so would have meant tightening the reins on other things we adore like travel, leisure and quality food. And I realised I didn’t want to invite financial pressures and layers of stress into our lives just for sake of a bigger home, especially not during these volatile times.
IS WHAT WE WANT ACTUALLY WHAT WE NEED?
With my son likely heading off to university in three years, I had to ask myself: do we really need a five-bedroom home at this stage of life? I’m not gonna lie, space to me is the ultimate form of luxury and the thought of creating content in a light-filled, Instagram-worthy home made my heart skip a beat. But deep down, I knew that while it was something I wanted, it wasn’t something we actually needed.
The truth is, our current home isn’t always perfect for content creation. It has its limitations, and yes, it can be mighty frustrating. But it’s also the space where I built my brand and my creative business over the last decade, and those constraints have pushed me to be more creative than I ever thought possible. With a little reshuffle - a small kitchen redesign to solve those pain points (hello, big fridge freezer!) and a loft conversion to give my son the space he deserves - I realised I could make this home work beautifully for us for years to come.
And here’s a little honesty: I let Instagram and interior accounts get in my head. Seeing those picture-perfect, big homes with heigh ceilings and endless original features made me feel like I was missing out. It shifted my focus to the things I didn’t have, instead of the things I already do — things I’d been taking for granted like light and cosiness.
So I asked myself: Is the house move a change I need, or just a want shaped by what I’m seeing around me? Maybe it’s a question worth sitting with for you, too.
A DREAM HOUSE OR A DREAM LIFE?
When we put our home on the market and prospective buyers started coming through the door, I cried. And when - within mere days of listing it - we received an offer, I sobbed uncontrollably.
At the time, I brushed those feelings aside, telling myself it was normal to feel a pang of sadness when saying goodbye to the place where I’d experienced some of the happiest years of my life, ever.
As the weeks passed, I kept trying to bury those emotions. I had to, we were now in a property chain, and pulling out of the sale would mean disappointment for our buyers and the sellers of the home we’d fallen in love with. It felt selfish and cruel to even entertain the idea.
But as the exchange date crept closer, a realisation quietly surfaced. That beautiful Edwardian semi was undeniably our dream house. I am confident we would have filled it with joy and laughter. But what I came to understand is that this small, unassuming terraced home on the friendliest street, next to the sweetest park at the top of a picture-perfect hill, surrounded by neighbours who’ve become chosen family had already given us our dream life! Perhaps this wasn’t the home change I needed in 2025 after all.
Choosing What Feels Right Over What Looks Perfect
So, just weeks away from signing on the dotted line, we made the difficult decision to pull out of the sale. Honestly, I felt physically sick as I hit ‘send’ on the email to the estate agent. They’d been nothing short of incredible throughout the whole entire process, and letting them and everyone else in the chain down was heartbreaking.
But deep down, I knew we’d made the right call.
In the days that followed, the initial guilt slowly gave way to an immense sense of relief. The weight I hadn’t even realised I was carrying lifted, and our house, this little home we almost walked away from felt even more magical than when we first stepped inside all those 14 years ago. Lighter. Warmer. Ours, in a way it hadn’t for months.
And now, with a fresh perspective and exciting plans to enhance the home we already love, the truth is: we couldn’t be happier. This experience taught me that while a dream house might look perfect on paper, it’s the life you build within your walls that matters most.
Before you go…
I truly hope you enjoyed this blog post. You can find quite a few Instagram posts about interiors here, here, here and here so be sure to follow along and subscribe to the mailing list below to be informed of new blog posts too!