A young couple from Liverpool are planning to move into their first home together by Christmas after defying their friends and family who laughed at their grand plans.
Amy Wright, 24, and David Lavery, 25, ignored their loved ones' advice in their pursuit of buying their first house together by the end of the year in what has been a turbulent period in the property market.
After being disillusioned with their attempts to purchase a new build, Amy and David's attention turned to older properties in need of some tender loving care in their hunt for their dream abode.
Amy, who is an online fitness coach, and project manager Daniel revealed how they had 10 minutes to spare to contact the estate agent to make an offer on a dilapidated house, which family and friends "laughed at" due to the size of their renovation.
Undeterred, Amy said both her and David knew the north Liverpool home was "the one" and could not wait to get started.
Amy told the Liverpool Echo : "We had ten minutes before the estate agent closed for the weekend, we rang up and we put an offer in."
Once the offer was accepted and an agonising five-month wait for the keys, Amy spoke about the "emotional day" of walking into their home for the first time.
She said: "I actually started crying. The daughter of the owner, had left us a gorgeous card with a lovely message inside and a bottle of prosecco set up on a small table and two little deck chairs. We both sat down, poured a couple of glasses and just took in the moment."
The fitness coach has documented the transformation on social media, with one video on TikTok garnering over one million views as the house slowly starts to take shape.
She added: "Anything that screams hard work I love, and so does David. It’s such a journey and you never know what’s about to happen next. I don’t know if that’s a good or bad thing sometimes. But all this hard work is going to be completed by us, and it’s going to be our home.
"We are absolutely loving it. It’s moving so fast, but that’s exactly what we wanted. We’ve both been there endless amounts of hours around our jobs and every little bit of spare time we have is dedicated to the house.
"We are literally ripping the whole thing out and we have knocked down walls already. We need new bathroom, windows, floor, lights, doors basically everything and eventually we’re going to do an extension for an open plan kitchen but that’s in a year to come. Not to mention the garden it’s huge, but we’ll sort that in the summer."
And the couple are set to achieve their deadline of moving in by the festive period, even if it is not fully complete.
Amy concluded: "A lot of people laughed at this but seriously... a bed, bathroom, and the kitchen and we’ll be moving in."