Owning your own home

Threatening cunts.

Lying weasels. Goes with the territory.

I want a house.

.

The surveyor tells me that the house I'm looking at has asbestos roof tiles. The roof is in decent condition so shouldn't need replacing any time soon but he reckons it will probably cost an extra few thousand for removal, disposal, etc when it does need repairing.

Anyone had any experience of this and whether that's the kind of figures I'd be looking at? Cheers

It'll be suspected as I assume they haven't been tested? Generally asbestos cement sheeting and tiles are non-licensed work as they're lower risk. There'll be a higher cost but unlikely to be excessive. Factor it in to your negotiations based on his estimate.

https://www.hse.gov.uk/asbestos/licensing/non-licensed-work.htm

Thanks for the tag, sorry it was a bit late. @Dammit I think you've done the right thing by paying it. It's painful, and it sucks, but it's by far the safest thing to do. Not doing it opens you up to legal costs which can spiral.

Is challenging it with a view to getting it returned to you something you're interested in doing now? As far as I can see you'd have a long road of admin to go down there with a far-from-guaranteed chance of even temporary success, but I could jot down a few ideas if that's something you're interested in.

As @Currid says its not as horrific as other bits of asbestos. We removed an asbestos roof ourselves a couple of years ago, and loaded it into a skip. the skip costs us about £700 for four tonnes of asbestos, however that is not London, so suspect you would pay a bit more than that. Our builder was willing to remove it as well, and wouldn't have charged a massive premium over just removing a normal roof.

Cheers @Currid and @Sam_w

I've only spoken to the surveyor on the phone so not got the full details but I think it was assumed from the era.

I can take a couple of grand extra in the future. The main concern was that it would be one of those things which would require huge amounts of specialist work.

I think you should be fine, only thing I would check before going to far is that your mortgage provider if you have one are ok with it, they should be if it is in a decent state, but mortgage companies are always a bit odd...

The valuer for the mortgage company is due to visit in the next couple of days so I should know fairly soon if they have an issue with it.

The valuer for the mortgage company is due to visit in the next couple of days

"What's your wifi password please - I need to look up the value of the property on zoopla."

Anyone have any thoughts on tactics when you want a place which is 'offers in excess of'?

Use https://www.getagent.co.uk/ to see what the % of asking price is typically the sale price for the estate agent in question, and offer that much.

It's a site for people selling their house, but actually the information can guide you as a buyer.

My question... has anyone done a bespoke kitchen or full kitchen refurb and has advice, recommendations, etc?

I've a fairly large kitchen that is an Ikea one and there are a lot of issues with it due to a suspected prior owner thinking they were good with DIY. Some of these issues are fundamental (like the water filter on the boiler being positioned same height as the work top and the work top is carved around it so the boiler is a time bomb as the filter can never be serviced - similar for appliance plug sockets, I'll have to dismantle the kitchen to change a fuse!).

Result: I'm thinking of a full bespoke Shaker style kitchen with a set of Bosch appliances (inc induction hob as I've read this thread).

Any recommendations for companies that do this, etc?

full bespoke is seriously costly.

we used john lewis (as in Waitrose, not the other one) and it was still fairly costly but the design service and customer service was really good, and 8 years on, it still looks good and everything still works.

worth considering.

John Lewis of Hungerford? Or do John Lewis do this too?

My very cursory look made me think these were separate companies.

Oh yeah, they do:
https://www.johnlewis.com/our-services/john-lewis-fitted-kitchens

they are.

we used john lewis partnership, not the hungerford people. go to the dept store on oxford st and have a look at their stuff.

We had a fully custom made kitchen, 18mm birch ply and iroko work surfaces, it was £10,000 for the materials, construction and fitting, which included installing the appliances but not the cost of them. Or thereabouts.

size of kitchen? £10k doesn't go that far ime.

Lots of people out there that do custom fronts for Ikea cabinets-which are actually very good so Ikea hardware then something a little more custom looks wise. We used plykea, but there are many on the market.

For example

https://www.shakerdoors.co.uk/ikea-metod-and-shaker-doors/

how dare you not recommend Plykea on the forum?!

size of kitchen? £10k doesn't go that far ime.

4mx4m, with units around 2.4 walls (as it were).

My friend has just used them and they are amazing.

Iroko / birch contrast look great.

Continues around the other side of the room

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