All your Homebase are belong to... you! / The House 'n' Home Thread. - The Bear and Badger

Cos

Roujin wrote:

Thanks dudes, of course this is just mortgage in principal, so will need the actual approval through from the bank. Plenty of opportunity now for my brain to torture me for the next however long by telling me its going to get declined and I'll have to go back and now my credit is fucked and everything is shitty forever. Any mashup may have to be quick, before Brixton becomes more Gondor than Mordor.

Is this a metaphor for gentrification? Kudos if so.

Otherwise I’ve massively misunderstood and carry on.

Roujin

No its what it is.

Morodor Mashup was so named because it was originally held in Streatham at Nick's old place.

poprock

Finished our house move, after two days with the professional moving crew. Fucking hell, it’s absolutely terrifying to see how much stuff you actually own. I mean, I remember feeling like this every time I moved house in the past, but this was a whopper. I thought I’d done well at reducing material things over the years – I was ruthless with clearouts on my solo house moves post-divorce – but me and the wife seem to have a lot of ‘things’ nowadays.

On the other hand, fuck KonMarie-ing it because I’m damn sure that everything I have does spark joy (or is useful). I’m way past that point.

Kow

Being disorganised I brought a huge box of cables that don't fit anything. Now I'd have to bring them to a special place to get rid of them and fuck doing that. Hopefully there's a future market for retro cables.

Roujin

Rah. Memorandum of sale incoming from the housing association, flat is being taken off the market, next step is instructing solicitors, one step closer to life on road as a Brixton boye.

Unlikely

Sounds like it's coming together, although from what I understand buying property in England is a fucking horrible process, and until you've actually got the keys in your hand it can fall apart at any time. I hope it does not in this case.

Roujin

Yeah, really all that's waiting for now is the mortgage acceptance from the bank.

It's a new build I'm a first time buyer pleb so there's no chain to deal with thank fuck which will hopefully make things easier. Of course I've just jinxed it by typing that.

g.man

Fingers crossed for you mate.

Roujin

Thanks G. Of course needless to say, if this goes through any badgers happening to require a place to crash are always welcome.

Diluted Dante

Roujin wrote:

Thanks G. Of course needless to say, if this goes through any badgers happening to require a place to crash are always welcome.

Roujin would later come to regret these words...

LivDiv

Good luck and congrats Rouj.
I'm sure it will go fine.
As long as you were honest about earnings and haven't had CCJs or bankruptcy that you didn't declare theres no real reason it wont go through given it's a new build.

Time_on_my_hands

Ugh. Why is the whole building trade seemingly founded on conning customers with random quotes. Getting quotes for sash windows - got a ludicrous range of offers for 5 windows from £750 per window to tonight's waste of time at over £11,000 (after an hour's gabbing) for 5 windows and a front door, followed by the hard sell of "I'll knock it down to £8k if you sign up right now, because I've just remembered we've got a cancellation in 2 weeks time". Fuck right off, I wasn't born yesterday. Could tell he was pissed off we'd turned down this offer, but why the fuck can't these people just offer a decent honest quote up front? Or do punters really fall for this sort of thing?

Phew.

Missed Partridge for this.

Meanwhile, if any Badgers have had sash windows fitted, any idea of a reasonable price to try to haggle to?

davyK

Hard to say - depends on whether the fittings are hand made or not for example which the £11K quote may have been about - reclaimed timber etc. Or was this just for glass?

Roujin

Time_on_my_hands wrote:

Meanwhile, if any Badgers have had sash windows fitted, any idea of a reasonable price to try to haggle to?

Depends how many windows and how big and what materials you want innit fam.

Time_on_my_hands

Sounds satanic, but it was for upvc sash windows (replacing existing upvc bog-standard windows). Can't afford new wooden sash windows.

Eric

We had about 5 quotes for our Sash windows and there was a huge variance between top and bottom prices. Ventrolla came in most expensive for us (£16k) but their product was significantly more impressive than everyone else's (it allowed you to take the sash out and clean it.) Unfortunately the frame looked too chunky for us so decided to go for a local joiner who matched our original frame size and as he used a 10mm double glazing unit it allowed us to match exactly the existing beading profile. He was the only guy who came round who actually did the work, all the others were salesmen.

We had 12 windows done (all varying sizes) got 4 stained glass windows encapsulated and paid about £9k. Aesthetically we were really pleased however I will say that the 10mm thick glazing does nothing acoustically.

We are based in Manchester and quite a few down my road had theirs done by Joinery Workshop who when they didn't get the job rang me up and offered to match the quote of the local joiner. We also asked for hardwood quotes.

Go with your gut, go and see their work and check references/reviews.

We also had to pay a painter and decorator to do all the frames too so probably cost us about £11k all in

Eric

Ha ha well ignore all that then! We had some UPVC ones put in at the back of the house and paid about £1k each but they are tilting ones that enables you to clean them and are two tone dark grey on the outside white on inside.

poprock

Got the first of our false ceilings down yesterday. There is quite a lot going on up there.

Time_on_my_hands

That's really helpful, though, because even counting for Manchester/ London price differences, I still know that the higher quotes I'm getting are the sort I'd expect for wooden sashes!

Thanks for taking the time to post.

Roujin

DAT REAL CEILING IN THE FIRST PIC POPPO OMG

Paul the sparky

Yeah, that plaster cornice is lovely.

The multiple connector blocks and joint boxes in the second pic are making my teeth itch though.

poprock

Whoever did all the original work was stone-cold bonkers. Fixing it all now.

Rouj, that cornice is nothing. This is our living room ceiling, which is at the proper four metre height …

poprock

Excuse the lighting setup, I took down all the fancy shades and bulbs etc in preparation for the flat turning into a building site.

Eric

That is a beaut Pops! What a room.

davyK

Paul the sparky wrote:

Yeah, that plaster cornice is lovely. The multiple connector blocks and joint boxes in the second pic are making my teeth itch though.

And those pipe joints and stops are other things I'd rather not have concealed that way....

Majestic ceilings. And don't worry if it gets damaged as there are companies who come out and take a cast of what you have and make a mold. The one we used keeps the mold for the future (and it was nowhere near as ornate as this) - AND was nowhere near as expensive as you might think that sounds.

poprock

All the pipes (gas + water) are being removed and re-routed under the floors. We’re probably even going to move the gas meter to a more sensible position while we’re at it (pending a quote from the network supplier). All the lighting and wiring is going in the bin and being re-done from scratch.

We’re not going to rescue those old ceilings/cornices. We’re keeping the amazing living room ceiling, that just needs some repair by a specialist – he’ll be on site to survey it later this week once the rest of the ceilings are down (they should be down by the end of today). The olive/gold ceilings you can see in those photos don’t match up with the room layout as it stands now, so our hallway has three different styles of original cornicing all converging together in odd shapes. We’re getting price options on different ways on handling the new ceiling in there, but most likely we’ll go with all-new cornicing based on a mould from one of the old designs. We do hope to rescue the original cornicing in the main bedroom though – there should be three full runs of it in there for us to just match a fourth run to. We’ll see for sure once that ceiling is down later today.

It’s a lot to take in very quickly – this is only the first two/three days of work and they’ve also already stripped the kitchen and bathroom back to bare shells. Floors are out, plaster is off the walls, everything.

Roujin

poprock wrote:

Whoever did all the original work was stone-cold bonkers. Fixing it all now.

Rouj, that cornice is nothing. This is our living room ceiling, which is at the proper four metre height …

GAT DAYUM

poprock

Text from the builders. They found this when they pulled down our bedroom’s false ceiling. All looking in A1 condition. Just needs one run of new cornice replicated for the nearside wall. HELL YEAH.

cockbeard

Wowsers, that looks lovely

Roujin

Imagine the state of interior decorating in the UK when it was considered de rigueur to cover work like that up in favour of a plain ceiling and the associated lowered ceiling height that it would cause.

Fucking hell.

Howdy, Stranger!

Categories