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A question for the room gurus...

Is there a possibility to dig down? Our basement had limited opportunity for that as we would have had to get the whole house underpinned. By the time we put in underfloor insulation we ended up with barely over 7ft. It is not bad but the extra foot available in the room when we dug it out made a massive impact. Enjoy your house hunting, nice to have a focus at this time.
 
seagull said:
Moving from London commuter belt to rural Dorset.
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Lovely. My mother and sister are fortunate enough to live, seperately, in rural Dorset. I love to visit them when I can, it is a special place with wide open countryside bla bla.. Sister and husband have just realised that only one other (very elderly) couple have lived in their village longer than they have. It is quite small and isolated - they do not lock their house door!

She always tells me the same story - a new couple usually retiring, just sometimes a family, move into the village. Hurrah! New life. So the new chap visits the pub - its a gastro destination place, but there is a friendly public bar at the front. He buys a pint, strikes up a conversation and very soon pops the question... "Do any of you know of a good cleaner?" Whereupon everyone falls off their chairs, laughing. He is baffled.... until the reply comes.... 'you think a cleaner can afford to live around here?'

Good luck - we have thought about moving down there ourselves - there is a lot to recommend it - but I would miss having a cleaner!
 
As your going rural and if the property has the ground space , you could always build an extension as a dedicated listening room or even a completely new room.

I'm in rural Lincolnshire and have no desire to move. But when i wanted a large dedicated room two options came to mind.
1 - extend the current room or 2 - build another room from scratch.

I went with no 2 as extending the original room would still have had compromises , would have been a lot of upheaval and would have spoilt the look of the house. Building from scratch gives you complete freedom for size/design/layout/etc. I appreciate not to everyone's desire but its just something else to think about.
 
Folkman said:
As your going rural and if the property has the ground space , you could always build an extension as a dedicated listening room or even a completely new room.

I'm in rural Lincolnshire and have no desire to move. But when i wanted a large dedicated room two options came to mind.
1 - extend the current room or 2 - build another room from scratch.

I went with no 2 as extending the original room would still have had compromises , would have been a lot of upheaval and would have spoilt the look of the house. Building from scratch gives you complete freedom for size/design/layout/etc. I appreciate not to everyone's desire but its just something else to think about.
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One of the beauties of rural Lincolnshire is the space available. I grew up near Louth, so I know it well. If I were (still!) round there and needed extra rooms I'd be going down the log cabin route. It's not as viable in a place with a small garden.
 
JensenHealey said:
Lovely. My mother and sister are fortunate enough to live, seperately, in rural Dorset.
She always tells me the same story - a new couple usually retiring, just sometimes a family, move into the village. Hurrah! New life. So the new chap visits the pub - its a gastro destination place, but there is a friendly public bar at the front. He buys a pint, strikes up a conversation and very soon pops the question... "Do any of you know of a good cleaner?" Whereupon everyone falls off their chairs, laughing. He is baffled.... until the reply comes.... 'you think a cleaner can afford to live around here?'
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So my guess is it's one of the honeypot villages like Milton Abbas or similar? Because it's not all like that. Villages near Poole or Weymouth, no problem. They are hardly excessively wealthy. Offer a half day's work once or twice a week and people will get in the car. Similarly Blandford etc. I worked in a factory in Poole about 7 years ago, you wouldn't have struggled to get someone who would travel 10 minutes in the car for 4 hours at £15 an hour.
 
hi, im with tonerei, on this i would dig down as much as you can, you can do this yourself, but have a builder on hand, for information, and help, underpinning, would not cost a fortune, ish, but then you have a room for life, hard to put a price on that,,
 
stevec67 said:
So my guess is it's one of the honeypot villages like Milton Abbas or similar? Because it's not all like that. Villages near Poole or Weymouth, no problem. They are hardly excessively wealthy. Offer a half day's work once or twice a week and people will get in the car. Similarly Blandford etc. I worked in a factory in Poole about 7 years ago, you wouldn't have struggled to get someone who would travel 10 minutes in the car for 4 hours at £15 an hour.
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True. Yeah, sister is further in deeper Dorset than Poole. That South Eastern corner of Dorset is rather different than the grand hills further West. Sister lives not too far from Dorchester. She used to live in the villages around about Milton Abbas - gorgeous area, have visited many times. Melcombe Bingham and so on. The Fox at Ansty I well remember in its heyday.
 
The Fox, that takes me back. I stayed there for a while in 1989, worked at the Eden Vale factory in Milborne St Andrew. Met a girl there, a student. We were together for 2 years, pretty sure I took her to the Fox more than once. In fact I remember going there with her and cleaning up at the pool table. God knows how, I must have been up against Stevie Wonder.
 
Update...

We found a few alternatives (no cellars but good potential listening rooms).

We put our house on the market and accepted an offer £10k above asking price.

We could start our search in earnest except for the fact that all of our short list had gone.

We spent last weekend scrolling through Rightmove looking at nearly every house in Dorset within our price range, some extremely attractive cottages but none that would give us what we wanted.

We extended the search to Devon and Somerset without success.

We were feeling disappointed but at least we were now in a position to make an offer should anything come up.

Then we had a phone call from an estate agent. The house with the cellar was back on the market, he asked if we were still interested. We said yes and quickly negotiated a price (matching the previously accepted offer) which was accepted by the vendors. This was well below the original asking price, so another result!

The original buyer dropped out due to the local crime figures. No one we spoke to could quite believe that, it's hardly a hotbed of crime down there.

Anyway, the survey is now booked, finance is set up (we will finally be mortgage free) and we've started filing in the various documents. Mrs seagull has overcome her reservations as we will have some extra cash to spend on the garden, which isn't inspiring but has potential.

Looking forward to a new chapter in our lives.
 
Great news for you. Let’s hope it continues going in the right direction & you can look forward to getting the music room (& garden) sorted.
 
seagull said:
Update...

We found a few alternatives (no cellars but good potential listening rooms).

We put our house on the market and accepted an offer £10k above asking price.

We could start our search in earnest except for the fact that all of our short list had gone.

We spent last weekend scrolling through Rightmove looking at nearly every house in Dorset within our price range, some extremely attractive cottages but none that would give us what we wanted.

We extended the search to Devon and Somerset without success.

We were feeling disappointed but at least we were now in a position to make an offer should anything come up.

Then we had a phone call from an estate agent. The house with the cellar was back on the market, he asked if we were still interested. We said yes and quickly negotiated a price (matching the previously accepted offer) which was accepted by the vendors. This was well below the original asking price, so another result!

The original buyer dropped out due to the local crime figures. No one we spoke to could quite believe that, it's hardly a hotbed of crime down there.

Anyway, the survey is now booked, finance is set up (we will finally be mortgage free) and we've started filing in the various documents. Mrs seagull has overcome her reservations as we will have some extra cash to spend on the garden, which isn't inspiring but has potential.

Looking forward to a new chapter in our lives.
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Congrats - expecting some pics once you get cracking with the cellar, thoroughly enjoyed converting a room in the old house into a cinema/hifi room, chasing cables under the floor/in walls etc. No chance in the current place though.
 
seagull said:
Update...

We found a few alternatives (no cellars but good potential listening rooms).

We put our house on the market and accepted an offer £10k above asking price.

We could start our search in earnest except for the fact that all of our short list had gone.

We spent last weekend scrolling through Rightmove looking at nearly every house in Dorset within our price range, some extremely attractive cottages but none that would give us what we wanted.

We extended the search to Devon and Somerset without success.

We were feeling disappointed but at least we were now in a position to make an offer should anything come up.

Then we had a phone call from an estate agent. The house with the cellar was back on the market, he asked if we were still interested. We said yes and quickly negotiated a price (matching the previously accepted offer) which was accepted by the vendors. This was well below the original asking price, so another result!

The original buyer dropped out due to the local crime figures. No one we spoke to could quite believe that, it's hardly a hotbed of crime down there.

Anyway, the survey is now booked, finance is set up (we will finally be mortgage free) and we've started filing in the various documents. Mrs seagull has overcome her
reservations as we will have some extra cash to spend on the garden, which isn't inspiring but has potential.

Looking forward to a new chapter in our lives.
Click to expand...

Well done, hopefully all will proceed swimmingly. My turn next I hope!
 
Well, We're in. The move was a nightmare, the removal van broke down on the moving in day. Mrs S feared there is little storage space (both the attic and garage have been converted to rooms) and we're trying to squeeze a quart into a pint pot. There are still boxes everywhere and I have had to go to hospital twice since moving in!

We have nearly sorted the music room though. Only one on the sofas fitted down the stairs (that was only because it comes apart). The other seating is now my Stressless recliner, Mrs seagull's Stressless and a reproduction Eames recliner. The room lighting is the next issue. there are embedded ceiling lights, which I hate, but there is one situated above the space where the racks are, which is useful. The previous owner installed LED lights in the skirting boards which provide a decent low-level lighting. We bought a couple of new lamps to provide a bit more usable lighting including this one...

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The record and CD racks are along the wall behind the prime listening position. I've also hung my music related pictures on the walls. The equipment racks fit nicely in the space under the stairs and I've currently got the speakers firing along the length of the room and they have plenty of space around them. Mrs S insisted on a new TV so we went for a 55" LG OLED beast (delivered just in time for the football!), That is on the wall between the speakers and I've hooked up the sound to the hi-fi via a cheap DAC for now.

The sound is VERY different to what I had before. It really shows the effect the room has. My previous listening room was much smaller and accentuated the bass, probably too much. I'd liken the difference to that between a pre-cirkus LP12 to having a cirkus fitted (I did that 10 years ago). There is still plenty of bass though (I played 'Angel' by Massive Attack, MFSs DO bass) and it is extremely tuneful and I can now hear more detail, which is nice.

I'm home alone at the moment (self-isolating while Mrs seagull has gone to get miss seagull's stuff back from university but that's another story). I was able to turn up the volume and keep going well past the point where it used to drive the room in the old house and it wasn't overbearingly loud.
 
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