Owning your own home

@soul we're in on 335 and they want 340

pfft. Definitely tell them to whistle...

that’s amazing it’s like 1.1% or something

Agent either hates them or is asleep

i think the agent most definitely hates them

I’m really stuck about what to do. We can’t afford to get everything done, but it seems to be a toss up between using everything we have on the loft, which I’m hoping we eventually need the space for, and will add the most value to the property, or alternatively get a new kitchen, redesigning the space without too much heavy engineering, and leave money for a new bathroom and then still have money left over as savings. I’ve been putting off doing anything, with the trade off being the comfort of knowing the money is there for a lot of different eventualities, but realistically I should put it to work. Current thinking is to go for the later option of kitchen + bathroom, then when we next remortgage in 5 years, release some capital for the loft, if we haven’t moved by then.

This is exactly where we were/are. We thought we'd tidy up the layout downstairs in a thoughtful-but-not-heavy fashion for mild expense, and get all the rubbish bits not-rubbish with some more cash and then see how things stood. The knock through was a 'it's already been done, why not open it up' afterthought that has turned out to be a bit of a pain. That said, if we'd gone for the loft, the weakness of this wall would have become apparent in a less pleasant way and we'd still have had to sort it, albeit in a more financially precarious position, so of all possibilities I'm definitely not in the Worst Timeline.

Our reasoning was that although doing the loft would add the most £££ value to the house, it wouldn't add anything meaningful to our enjoyment of the house day-to-day (we don't need the extra bedroom yet, it'd only tempt the in-laws to stay…). We'd love to do a proper out-back extension (currently have a small galley kitchen lean to thing) if we ever get to the end of this step without the house falling down or going bankrupt, as it seems to us a good compromise between enjoyment-of-space and financial return.

turned out to be a bit of a pain.

I started vacuuming under the sofa two weeks ago.

I've now torn up the floor, sawn out a load of joists, removed a dwarf wall and stripped plater back to the bare brick.

With any luck, I won't be asked to vacuum again.

I am so glad I ran into you yest

Cheers, I couldn't find anything on Amazon warehouse so Itzala it is.

Had a window salesmen guy come knock on the door and try and scare me into upgrading our windows because external beading and security etc. After I told him to fuck off with his scare tactics sales methods, I did some googling and it does seem like somewhat of a risk. Does anyone know any methods to prevent this form of break in without having to replace the units?

The lower/dodgier end of window fitting relies upon wedges to set the window unit straight/square then expanding foam to fill the void to the wall. This is trimmed and the external beading fitted. Parents' neighbours' kids once came down in the early morning only to find no tv/video, (shows how long ago this was).
No sign of break in.
Thieves had silently cut through foam, removed window unit, purloined easily saleable goods and replaced wndow unit.

Check your window frames to see if there are any sizeable screw heads showing.
Any idea how old your window units are?

purloined

I like it

offer accepted. about time.

🙏🏻

Nice. Congrats.

Congrats! And nicely played...

Nice!

gna need to go BBQ shopping to get the most of my new terrace. provided we complete before autumn. and/or complete.

and/or sun

i think that'll be classed as the easy part of this scenario.. unfortunately..

Anybody ever had an estate agent tell you that your offer has been accepted, got a letter through confirming that it's been accepted, then have their solicitor contact yours to tell them that it was actually rejected? I can't see how anybody benefits but equally can't see how the estate agent would have made that kind of screw up in the first place.

Sounds like the offer has been gazumped maybe.

Depends whether you have easy access to soil pipe and mains feed. I'd expect 2.5-3k if yes, probably 5k if it's a bit more work

I don't think so because the estate agent is adamant that it hasn't been rejected despite what their solicitor is saying, which wouldn't make sense if we had been gazumped.

How big are your surfaces? If you can find enough marble from another kitchen on the cheap, getting it cut isn't too bad. Ours cost about £350 to get redone, and I did the templating and fitting myself, which wasn't as hard as I feared, but we don't have stacks of counter space.