AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

We might officially own a house in under 24 hours!!!

*FLAIL*

Daydream Believer

So there's this thing happening: we're buying a house. Yep, I know we're getting really boring about this now, but you'll have to cope. It really is the most exciting and terrifying thing ever, and my poor brain can't stop to think about anything else.

I day dream. I night dream. I have never pondered insulation so much in my life, and that's really saying something. My logic is, it's OK to dream if you actually end up doing the thing you're dreaming about. Actually it's OK to dream anyway, but if you actually do the thing, you get to enjoy the dreaming and then enjoy the achieving, and that's at least 3 times as awesome*.

So this is what I've been dreaming about. Actually, this is only one of my crazy dreams, but I'll ease you in gently by leaving the rest for another post.

So this morning I woke up obsessed with green roofs (again). I love them. I used to live in a field, and now I live in a city, and I just miss all the green. Greenness makes my eyes feel all relaxed and happy, and it is oh-so-lacking in the view from the back of our new place. We will en-green-en the garden, but that is not enough for me; I think we need to en-green-en the house too.

The bathroom extension on the lower ground floor of our new abode needs re-roofing, as it has been creatively (AKA badly) roofed in the past. We could just slap on a concrete tile roof, such as adorns it now. We could. Or y'know, we could be all awesome and cover it in plants. I was so excited by this idea this morning, that the very thought of it was keeping me awake. I wanted - no, needed - to know just how amazing it would be, so I turned to Photoshop to make my dreams come true.

And lo, gentle reader, here is what it would look like. On the left is how it looks currently, on a particularly grim Swansea day, and on the right is the small, but not insignificant, patch of greenery (and purplery, and reddery) that we could be adding.

Not bad for the limited Photoshop skills of a sleepy woman at 7am

I can hear some of you, being all pragmatic and stuff. Stop it now! Yes, it would be cheaper to just slap a concrete roof on. Yes, that would probably be less ambitious for a bunch of people with very little building experience. Yes, I have yet to convince the rest of the co-op that it's a great plan. But no, I will not stop dreaming that we can go beyond average to awesome.

This is for why. When the daft scheme to set up a housing co-op was first mooted, I honestly thought we'd never do it. I went along with it just in case we did ever get it together, however unlikely that seemed. Then this thing happened where for two years we kept dreaming. We dreamt little and often. We sometimes woke up with a start, faced reality for a bit, and then went back to our dreaming. But the point is, we never stopped thinking that dreaming was a good idea, because there was that slim chance that one day, somehow, we might actually do it.

And here we are, more than two years later, and something we dreamed of is coming true. This is so very definitely NOT the time to stop dreaming. It is the time to dream even bigger because we know that dreams can be believed in.

- Hannah

*awesome is bigger than the sum of it's parts.

Loomingness

Our completion date has been set, and is looming! At least two of us are decluttering as fast as Freecycle will allow; we are probably even giving things to people who email us in all caps and/or minus punctuation.

I find new homes for bags and boxes and drawers of tat and I suspect that I still can't fit my possessions into the boot of a car, but I'm definitely getting there. My latest obsession is minimalism. I'm currently trying an experiment that I just made up. My to-be-read bookshelf is behind my head and it holds at least 30 books. I can keep any that I can name without looking. It's going like this:

• The Black Tattoo
• The Gargoyle
• That one with the angel on it
• Brave New World, but I don't really care so much about this one so why did I remember that?
• Shut up I don't like this experiment any more
• Your face
• Oh! Cradle to Cradle. YESSSS.

So, anyone in Swansea in need of silly quantities of yarn and fabric, call Hannah. Anyone in need of an enormous guillotine that can cut 400 pages in one go, contact Cassian. Anyone in need of LARP weapons, contact Sven.

Anyone in need of dinner in exchange for help moving house and/or DIY skillz, contact us in about 4 weeks, oh my goodness it's so exciting!

Tomorrow, me and Hannah are going to go to a solicitor to get something signed. Things are happening!

Progress! No, really :)

Well, what a torturous few weeks it has been here at Golem HQ. To say we've been on the edge of our seats, biting our nails to the quick whilst somehow also hanging on tenterhooks would be to use a string of cliches which actually described reality quite well. Tense times.

But now, at last, and after no small amount of emailing and phoning back and forth between us and our building society, we have our formal mortgage offer. Golems rejoice!

This is a big thing, and it's been a long time coming. Originally, when our offer was accepted, we were guessing that we would be in the house in mid-April. Hmm. Looking at the date of this blogpost, it's clear that that didn't happen. And yet, all through the long-winded and downright annoying months between the offer being accepted and now, everyone involved has assured us that the length of time this is taking is quite normal. If that's true, it's no wonder that buying a house is one of the most stressful things you can do. All that waiting, calling, waiting, emailing, waiting, signing, waiting, paying for things, waiting and finally waiting some more, is all a precursor to an incredible, exhausting flurry of activity when it comes to actually moving your stuff. Couldn't it be the other way around?

Anyway, ranting aside, we have a lot to do. Now that the Offer of Loan, as it is properly called, is in, we need to open a loanstock window for our lovely loanstockers, work out a completion date with our solicitor, and actually figure out what all that stuff in the understairs cupboard is, and whether it's coming with us or not. Scary stuff, but so, so exciting.

Once all the legal and financial stuff is sorted out, I am hoping that this blog will take on a new role,  documenting the practicalities, successes, and failures of co-op living. There will probably be lots of eco-renovation stuff, permaculture (if I get my way) and DIY creeping in, as well. I know that lots of people enjoyed the house-hunting stage of things (what is it that's so exciting about spying inside other peoples' houses?) but I'm hoping you'll enjoy the next stage too.

And we'll finally have somewhere to invite you around to for a cup of tea :)

- Hannah

The (Geeky) Haps

It has been too long! Rest assured, no news is currently good news.

Some hiccups include the solicitors seeming to not know whether we're a housing co-op, a business or a housing association, and the house still being on the market.

Some progress includes the survey and valuation coming back, and not being too terrifying. Also, we've emailed the loanstock folk to tell them what we're up to. We're waiting to hear back about some mortgagey things, but bank holidays all over the shop are slowing things up a bit.

Also, and this is the most exciting bit for me (Lotte/Cassian), no one strongly objected to me being in charge of the Front Door. (There were some looks of dubiosity, but I consider those to be stand-asides.) OH MY WORD am I going to paint it TARDIS blue and put a police box sign on it and also a silver door-knocker and change the number to 221b and put anti-demon wards in the doorframe? YES YES I AM.

Progress, sort of.

Hello! Here I am again with a little bit of news. Not much; it's been a slow week, but it seems polite to keep you updated.

So, we're waiting to hear back from the survey. It took place last weekend so we shouldn't be waiting too long. It's scary, exciting, and then scary again. Surveys are really interesting, but also potentially full of revelations about inappropriate roofing materials, rising damp, subsidence and all sorts of other delights. Rather than these terrifying things being in massive red type like they should be, they're casually strewn through the weighty tome in exactly the same size and colour as the hugely mundane observations about how many windows there are. This makes the whole experience of reading one feel akin to walking through some sort of literary minefield: scary, but also rather exciting when you get to the end of a chapter without anything massive blowing your plans completely out of the water. Fingers crossed it will be a profoundly dull document with no surprises. We'll let you know.

In other, rather more definitely exciting news, two new people have started the joining process for the co-op. For now, they're going to remain mysterious, but if all goes well, we buy the house, and they become members of our merry gang, I will persuade them to write a blogpost introducing themselves. If they like us and we like them, our co-op will have seven adults and one child, but will still fit in Labyrinth. I told you it was big.

A quick round-up of other news:
- We've nearly finished our secondary rules, honest. I know we've been doing this for ages, but we really are nearly there - until we think of more, anyway ;) When they're done, we'll put them up as a page on the blog and write a post about them.
- We're still on the lookout for loanstock, just in case anyone wants to make an awesome ethical investment.
- We got a filing cabinet from wonderful local charity MOre Green. I am ridiculously excited about this because weirdly, for someone so messy, I <3 filing.

Expect a post this week with news from the survey, or perhaps just a picture of me in a sobbing heap, depending on how it goes.

- Hannah

House Buying Update and Loanstock Request

Yesterday's post was all whimsy, and I couldn't bear to put all the boring practical stuff in it too (plus it was already hugely long), so here is a quick update of where we are up to with actually buying the place.

Lots of emails have been flying back and forth between us, the mortgage company, the estate agent, our solicitor and our surveyor. It's almost impossible to tell how quickly these emails might actually result in Important Things Happening, but so far there have been no major glitches. It would seem that our business plan works rather well, thank you, and the next big scary thing is really getting the survey done. Work on arranging that is happening today, and if last time is anything to go by, our surveyor will be pretty speedy at getting it done and reporting back to us. We'll let you know the gory details of that once it's done.

So far, we have been very lucky with loanstock, and it forms a large part of our deposit for the house. In reality we can probably make up the shortfall through a loan from Rootstock, but we would rather save the option of a loan from them for future eco-renovations to the property. Because of this, we are looking for a few more people to lend us loanstock. There is lots of information about loanstock on our loanstock page, and we are always super-happy to talk to people about it (and other co-op related things). If you have some spare funds which you are thinking of investing, then please consider lending us loanstock. We have a fine track record of providing cake to investors, and you will always be welcome round for a cup of tea once we have the house. Oh, and you'll get your money back at the end of the investment term, of course, but more importantly, there will also be cake. Our email is golem.coop@gmail.com if you feel like getting in touch.

Right, that's enough practical stuff for now. I'm off to poke people with metaphorical sticks some more.

- Hannah