Owning your own home

9/10 + .5 for tiny String scores you 9.5 / 10.

-.5 for wonky sofa

You will be sitting in an EA office trying to sell the place you just had an offer accepted on, no?

Ha. Well, not if this one falls through for whatever reason. I'll do works and stay in it for at least 6 months - 1 year I guess. Get rid of this whole 6month issue too.

I’ll take that.
“Wouldn’t touch the shithole” is what the modern house said, but I’m paraphrasing.

I've said I'll take off £500 towards the DPC he doesn't need to buy.

£5 says that once the plaster is stripped back, they'll find that some mug has already done the whole injection DPC snakeoil.

Anyone got any frames 60x80 or 70x100 cm they are looking to get rid of. I can take them off your hands, let me know..

Thanks

Heard that

Out of curiosity who did you go with in the end as a lender?

TSB. Right before the meltdown. They dicked us about too though and dropped their lend at the last minute - was painful.

Fuck. Sounds horrendous.

Anyone else bought through KFH? They are driving us round the bend. Endless phone calls to check up on things that we have already told them about and said that we will update them as soon as we know... They told us vendors are fine with the time things are taking so why are they on at us every day. Doing my head in.

£5 says that once the plaster is stripped back, they'll find that some mug has already done the whole injection DPC snakeoil.

Won't stop the 'Damp proof specialist' doing it again :)

We're going to put kitchen over the patch of wall that our survey flagged as having rising damp. After fixing the overflowing water butt on the other side of the wall...

Yes, we had similar; in our case it was that the dishwasher outlet was just running straight onto the ground, rather than into a drain.

We did get a wall treated. To be fair though, it did sufficiently address the problem for long enough. We only eventually found the cause when we pulled up the entire stone floor in replacing the kitchen - we wouldn't have found it with any reasonable level of investigatory works.

I think the numbers were something like first bank dropped lend by 50k, second bank 80k (!!!), third 40k and then finally the fourth was 20k. These were all drops against what we were told in our AIP.

We were trying to borrow more than we needed so as to have some money in the bank - that went out the window to close the gap. On the flip side, since everything took 4 months longer than planned, we received 4 months worth of extra paychecks which let us close the gap.

Yeah, they were fine though. We had about 3 phone calls from them throughout the whole process.

I wouldn't buy or sell through them after dealing with them through a couple different branches when looking for our last place.

One of the EA's was the biggest dickhead I've ever encountered, with his colleagues from another location being close second and third.

We're trying to borrow significantly less than our AIP which is what's making it exceptionally frustrating. EA said he's putting it back on the market tomorrow :/

What will that achieve for them? No-one else is going to be any further down the process than you...

Call his bluff

Think it's the vendor rather than him. He's been fairly open throughout he process. They're concerned we'll be declined (self employed etc which while it shouldn't be an issue can be depending on lender) and will have waited 3 months for nothing.

Loft conversions.

We've got a tiny Victorian terrace, interior width about 4.3M.

We thinking of getting an L-shaped conversion to add 2 guest rooms and a shower room. The shower room will be separate not an ensuite. One of the guest rooms will also be an office.

Layout 1 is to have the bathroom at the front, running between the stairs and the eaves. So the larger bedroom would be less than full width but run full front to back with velux at the front and a dormer at the back.

Layout 2 is to have the bathroom in the dormer, so the larger room has the full width at the front, though it still loses width at the stairs, but it doesn't run full front to back. It would have velux at the front and the bathroom wall at the back.

Layout 1 means the bigger room has windows at both ends, one with a garden view and maybe a juliet balcony. Everything being equal, it would be a nicer room, and if a future buyer wants to make it a master suite they just need to remove the corridor wall.

In layout 2 the bigger room has more full height wallspace for storage. It will definitely be possible to run a proper soil pipe from the bathroom. It might be less hot in summer without a south-facing window. It doesn't lose as much space in hallway/corridor. Everything being equal, it's more practical.

Anyone else done a similar conversion? Which layout did you go for and why?

Not done one but just bought a house with one.

This is the layout. It works well for me.

1 Attachment

Is this any help? Can get some pics or feel free to come have a look. Based in wood green.

Bit wider I know but even reducing some width think it could work.

Not quite sure where the 2nd room is going on your plan but I went with similar to layout 1 but en-suite.

It has a proper soil pipe (although there is a small boxing in under the eaves where it goes, the space would be useless for anything else).

We saw a few examples and the smaller rooms didn't seem worth the money and without plenty of windows they look a bit dark, velux don't seem to provide as much light as full size windows I thought.