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

davyK

Payment in phases is also a control mechanism. We only paid up when our architect said it was appropriate to.

But I feel your pain. We went through our last big job while still living in the house - though that was a major extension - not a renovation. That has its advantages and disadvantages. We have done it both ways.

There can be a feeling of not being in control which is in itself stressful.

LivDiv

Getting a valuation for my place tomorrow.
I've never cleaned this much in my life, especially as it is just a zoom call.

The place looks great, it would be a shame to sell it. All cupboards are full Monica Geller mind.

LivDiv

Finally sorted the front door as well. Prior to this it was still black but the paint was peeling all iver, numbers were rusty and the tenants of flats 1 and 2 had sellotaped on hand written notes saying that isnt their letter box.

Sanded it back, primed, repainted, new numbers, new lock facia, new door knob, brassoed letter box,scrubbed steps clean, painted step a blue I didnt expect but like, painted pillars and underside of canopy (they were covered in fucking gross Dickensian grime). Lastly the plaque next to letter box is 3D printed with embossed text stating where each flat is.

Armitage_Shankburn

Good work liv

LivDiv

I'm a tatty red briefcase away from delivering the alternative budget.

Armitage_Shankburn

How many % u giving me

LivDiv

I'm sorry all the money has gone on white spirit.

Armitage_Shankburn

How much u give me I can make u some more

LivDiv

Best I can offer you is a token cabinet position.
Unless you are good at staged photos where you look like you are hard working.

Armitage_Shankburn

Dude, I'm good at staged VIDEO where I look like I'm working. What's in this cabinet? Smirnoff?

LivDiv

Whatever you want, but the cabinet must never be in the video and you cannot come out of it.

hylian_elf

Quick question for our resident residential property experts. Appreciate the answer may not be quick though!

Our house is essentially fully detached. The boundary on one side is a shared driveway and garden fence (no buildings), but on the other side the boundary is our wall but there is currently a small 20cm or so gap between our wall and the neighbour’s garage. Still fully detached though, right?!

Question is, can he build up to our wall? What I mean is, can he (legally) knock down the garage and rebuild it bigger and touching our wall? If he can, I assume he needs our permission, or doesn’t he?

Thanks all!

yourfavouriteuncle

It literally depends on where the boundary is. If that is the boundary and he can come right up to your garage then you’d need to sign a bit of paper called the party wall act. You don’t have to sign it if you’re not happy with what’s being proposed but y’know they are your neighbours, you’ll have to live next to them whatever goes down so usually best to find common ground and be nice and friendly about it all. Especially over 200mm.

hylian_elf

Aight. But would it not devalue the property somewhat as it’d become linked-detached as opposed to actually fully detached?

LivDiv

Who likes all the tiles?
Handy to have a utility/murder room though.

https://www.rightmove.co.uk/property-for-sale/property-72504849.html

Time_on_my_hands

hylian_elf wrote:

Aight. But would it not devalue the property somewhat as it’d become linked-detached as opposed to actually fully detached?

I've taken a quick look at some forums and in my opinion, you should oppose this (you could argue that it's in both your and your neighbours benefit).

If the garage touches your house it looks as though both properties would become link detatched.
An issue that could THEN arise is if the neighbours converted that garage into a room, meaning both properties become semis, further reducing value.

Given all of this, it's actually in both your interests to keep that gap!

Depending on where the boundary line is, you could run a very low fence between your house and the garage - just a long metal bar, or something - as a 'do not cross' line!

GooberTheHat

LivDiv wrote:

Who likes all the tiles? Handy to have a utility/murder room though. https://www.rightmove.co.uk/property-for-sale/property-72504849.html

I like the concrete dungeon too.

LivDiv

What I want in my cosy loft bedroom is railings from an airport.
They have spent a lot of money on finishes.

hylian_elf

@Time: cheers. I did some forum digging on the nets too and come to the same conclusion. Our house and the neighbour’s are the only 2 houses for quite a stretch that are fully detached on a fairly sought after road. Spent a lot of money on that house and continuing to do so, so value going down would be a major kick in the teeth.

Kow

Stripping wallpaper - second on my list of most tedious things so far, after scraping paint off a ceiling.

Unlikely

Yet every once in a while a huge section comes off at once and there's a fleeting moment of satisfaction before you realise once again that you're wasting what little time you have on this earth.

nick_md

The satisfaction in those big strip cases is real, but I never want to strip wallpaper again. Decided to save money and strip a bunch of rooms myself, think there were 5 or so layers in some places, looked well old at the bottom. Some parts had plaster on top of old wallpaper. Took all my weekends for about 3 weeks, chemicals, steamer, scrapers the lot. Should've just paid someone to do it.

Unlikely

I went down the pay-someone-to-do-it route pretty fast after starting to strip the wallpaper in the kitchen after we moved in. Fuck knows what the previous owners had done but it would have taken me weeks.

Took the decorator a day.

Kow

Yar, the first strip I went for came off in one piece, in one pull. I thought, this will be easy....

Time_on_my_hands

Worst part is cleaning off the paste. We've a couple of walls with patches of crackling paint because there was paste residue still on the wall.

Good job one of them has a wardrobe against it...

Cos

After a few months of viewings and a couple of very cheeky low ball offers, we finally accepted an offer on our place last week. And icing on the cake, found a place we really like and had our offer on that accepted today. Huzzah!

Onto the tedious in between bits but it'll all be worth it once we're on the move. I will certainly miss being in London (once things get back to normal at least) but won't be so terribly far away that it's a chore to get to for gigs, meetups, etc.

Anyway, focusing on the cheer/relief for now!

poprock

Congrats Cosby! Exciting times.

We’re moving on Friday. I’m surrounded by boxes and we’re reduced to takeaway for dinner. Haven’t concluded the purchase yet, of course …

g.man

Great news Cos! Thrilled for you.

g.man

...and good luck Pops. Hope it's all plain sailing.

Dinostar77

Great news cosby. We packed over xmas last year and to be honest it was so fecking stressful. But all the xmas movies help when your packing up boxes. Life in the home counties now is it?

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