Owning your own home

Yeah, that's it, good eye.

Bucket handle pointing will be fine and also help even up any discrepancy with regards to gaps.

Also with regards to what @Vesalius said I'd wondered about the colour but assumed that it was some kind of mortar dye. If it's lime pointing then you need to ensure they have a proper strategy to protect it from frost.

How long does it need protecting for?

About 3 months. It takes a while to properly set.

anybody had a price given for 'preliminary visual inspection and report' by a structural engineer? Our freeholders have just sent one over at £450 plus VAT which seems a lot considering posts on here saying £1500 to do everything for extension works and stuff. Out of London too.

Will be asking for at least one more quote, as they are obliged to get, anyway

Exhausting to catch up with these super active threads with long posts about complicated issues after a few weeks! Enjoyed everyone's input about long hellish commutes, I agree that it's a soul destroying phenomenon and should be avoided whenever possible.

@youramericanlover also feel your thoughts:

I feel like it's this black hole of DIY I'm going to get sucked into

How's it going? I find it's on and off for me, I'll get caught up in something and go all anal about details and materials and money etc, followed by periods of 'ah fuck it where's the beer and TV, I hate modern humanity and the pointless race to middle class perfection'.

I'm great at parties

It's calming down - calling myself out publically as a uptight mundane bore helped snap me out of the funk. I'm now on the fourth attempt to get a range cooker installed after dodgey carpentry, dodgey electrics and bad installation advice and have had the cooker sitting in my living room for about 2-3 weeks now but I'm chill about it all now because the main thing is that the house will be safer after the work. I just need to cut the lawn, trim the hedge and get some kind of anchor for the bikes in the work shed.

All the boiler chat above though has made me want to hold back £3.5k of house money for when ours packs in so that has been useful too.

See, you get numb after a while! Yeah holding back £££ for when stuff inevitably shits itself is a good idea.

Not exactly the usual post but this has quick sale written all over it.
It’s not without drawbacks but for the right people could be a bargain for SE4 imo;
http://kallars.com/details/-/16516060/

Almost ideal[1] house appears on the market.

https://www.rightmove.co.uk/property-for-sale/property-66632949.html

If only I had £1m+ lying around I could refurb it and move in mortgage free. #hardlyabargain

1. Garage for bieks/crap, off street parking, small gardens, 3 bed, basement for study/office and playroom/gym, complete blank slate, small extension and rejig required, good location.
   

Probably awful neighbours though, this is the house next door:-

https://www.rightmove.co.uk/house-prices/detailMatching.html?prop=54650707&sale=78514113&country=england

See picture two for the inside of the garage.

Bueller? Bueller?

You’d need a fair whack to sink in to that. And that bedroom above the garage is gonna be freezing.

That's awful work and I'd stop them right now as they're damaging the building fabric.

The pointing should match the original pointing unless is was defective not some arbitrary list put together by someone on here.

Had an offer accepted on a property 6 weeks or so ago and they agreed to take it off the market for a month whilst we tried to sell ours. Still not had any offers on ours so they are planning to put it back on the market.

I'm considering dropping the price on ours and seeing what flexibility there'd be in renegotiating the purchase price if we did get a lower offer. I know they are keen to move so there could be some scope there but I'm not sure how much that would piss them off.

I know they are keen to move so there could be some scope there but I'm not sure how much that would piss them off.

It will piss them off but they might not have any choice - depends if there was anyone else keen at the time. They might just have to suck it up.

You’ll find out either way.

not some arbitrary list put together by someone on here

eh?

If you don't want to have awful neighbours, best to avoid South West London altogether, surely!

^ well golfclub.

It's a relative term. Where we are now (a few hundred yards from that property) the neighbours aren't bad at all, but the more expensive the road the more awful the residents tend to be.

Yep, that's the plan. I had a chat with their estate agent and the "nudge, nudge, wink, wink" seemed to be that they may drop a bit to get the sale done.

Tbh, the people who put me off living in SW London were all probably members of golf clubs.

but the more expensive the road the more awful the residents tend to be.

That was our experience of living in a quiet road in Barnes. Snobbery and unpleasantness of the highest order. Not towards us I might add, but towards our neighbours nannies, maids and labourers if they were having work done. Racist abuse, sexist abuse... They treated people less fortunate than themselves like shit on their shoes.

EDIT: It was stupid of me to jokingly tar the whole of SW London with that brush, I did not mean to cause any offence.

Keep it real and live east.

This would be a cracking project for someone. I'd have probably been up for it 5 years ago but don't have the time or energy for something like this atm.

https://www.rightmove.co.uk/property-for-sale/fullscreen/view-floorplan.html?propertyId=75899791

Hadn’t seen that - surely gonna cost a fair whack to sort it out?

Could be great. Sadly will go to developers and become 8 flats.