Owning your own home

Congrats! Staying there tonight?

Seems to be a theme by all accounts : )

One locksmith later, yes..

I think the company that did it have been back twice to rectify major leaks. The insurers insisted on a different company coming and basically resealing it completely on the third.

Completed and moved today.

Just done an emergency Argos run for heaters as the house has been empty for a while and is cold as a witches tit.
Heating is 1st on the long list of to-dos.

I think the company that did it have been back twice to rectify major leaks. The insurers insisted on a different company coming and basically resealing it completely on the third.

Not sure when you left Winky, was it before or after the architectural tour-de-force of the Brooks Centre went up? It's an unusual structure in that it's hard to say whether it's a worse shopping centre than boat, or vice versa.

For the non-Winchester people, the Brooks Centre was built on ground that (surprise!) had many small streams (AKA, brooks) running through it, and features a subterranean car park that regularly ruptures, resulting in scenes basically duplicated in the just-post iceberg part of Titanic.

And it's not like they ever had that problem in the nearby Cathedral...

The agent who sold my house (mcr) also sold one just round the corner, I was talking about their basement conversion and hence he told me about the sale/purchase. He reckoned it was £30kish and they wouldn't recoup the money. (They did it quite nice though, it was a piano studio, she was a teacher apparently... too much info)

The magic number for basements (at least a couple of years ago in London) was about £800 per square foot.

It's probably already the case in some areas where that's cheaper than moving to somewhere nearby with an extra room or two.

Is getting this done quite a quick affair? Expensive? Will also be looking to have this done almost immediately when we finally move in.

It wasn't planned. 4 keys for the door, one that doesn't work. Guess which one I took out?

Managed to get it working non-destructively but I guess he could have put a new lock in if needed.

The local guy that we used was great. Very knowledge about all things locks. Will dig his number out for you if you like.

have a 30sq m cellar in London with about 5ft depth. Had one quote for 150k just for digging an extra metre and tanking. Had another quote for 80k all in i.e. digging, tanking, walls, plastering, electrics, lights, the second quote was from a company who had already done one in my road....

Just clocked our removal men getting baked in the van. Will our shit die?

Do they just tank the walls, or have pumps and sumps and whatnot? Or is that overkill for a single storey down?

Yeah sounds good, ta.

Normally a 50 50 goes the wrong way for me, but 1 in 4, daaamn. I hope you had stellar luck for the rest of the day.

With all of the mini streams that run under houses it's often the case that digging a cellar and tanking it redirects the streams into neighbours properties. If they've got a cellar that isn't tanked then you'll hear about it soon enough (not sure how much of a problem it is for you).

both quotes was with pumps and all the gubbins....

Should be exchanging contracts today. Completing 1st March. Then just need to completely redo the bathroom and kitchen. And flooring. And bedroom. Sad face.

Underpinning basement walls alone costs around £1k per linear metre in my area. Basements are very popular here and costs around £80k to do, they do achieve a bigger increase in value though.

Just getting rid of the spoils is expensive these days.

Amazing. Tbh the only way I would consider approaching that kind of job.

Congratulations dude. And look on the bright side - it'll mean you can do it the way YOU want to. I did the same this time last year, going into summer is a good time to do up a place.

How's the new gaff?