Owning your own home

This.

The plasterboard was fucked and needed to come down, because the ceilings joists are bowed, new plasterboard would have gone on wonky. By the time you take down an old ceiling and replace it with a new ceiling that is still wonky, you will have spent the same as over-boarding it and making it straight.

Cleaned up version, dishwasher moved and island reduced in size

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I need to sell my trainer collection and build a sento.

I'm selling my sento to buy a house.

Well, a furo really.

All of the ASHP units I've seen look like massive aircon units with big fans... I'm in a totally silent street where you can hear a fox fart at night... I've got a chance to think of green things like an ASHP over the next few months (already having boiler work done) but my concern is noise and vibration from the fan unit. This place being so unerringly quiet that any noise will be noticeable.

This is a really good point. No ASHP here and we put our boiler in a cupboard outside, but the boiler, pumps etc. send noise down the pipes which run down one side of our flat. There are two walls between them and our bedroom but they are surprisingly loud. Not a big deal but for our next place (which I want to be somewhere very quiet) I will think carefully about the location of utilities/services, how much noise they make and how to stop it spreading around the house.

Where are you that's so quiet out of interest?

Where are you that's so quiet out of interest?

Crouch End.

You can look on a map to see the terrain, but in essence there's a steep hill with a bowl shallow in it and everything North of Stroud Green and South of Alexandra Palace is in this shallow and the hill is hard rock... meaning that the land reflects away the noise of London, the big roads all go around the hill, and the hard rock means there are no tube stations here... it's light suburbia, quiet roads and dead quiet all the time.

Was there a conversation in this thread about vacuum cleaners?

We are getting a new one and so I'm currently comparing a good old fashioned Henry hoover (on offer in Argos for £99) or pony up double that for a Miele Blizzard at £200.

I personally don't like Dysons so the above seemed pretty good options

Ah, wasn't sure if you were still there. I used to rent in Muswell Hill for a bit, sounds very similar. The demographic obviously makes a difference too but walking back at night from Highgate Tube because the buses had all disappeared again was eerily quiet.

I'm unrecommending a Shark because ours has lost nearly all suction. I've cleaned the filters etc. with no joy. I need to work out what's going on with it but am annoyed that I have to do that, so I've just gone back to old reliable Henry.

Basically my Shark is underperforming and I suspect the DS at Trek Segafredo may feel the same way.

eerily quiet

Exactly.

Right now my ears are ringing from the silence, I cannot hear a road, a train, a car, a plane... just nothing. Opened the window to check, leaves rustling, somewhere down the street someone else has an open window and faint voices.

It's very odd to think this is in London.

I bought a Miele Blizzard CX1 with the carpet brush attachment to replace our Dyson that had started to emit lightning about 3 weeks ago. Very happy with it, would buy again but still in the honeymoon period.

The weird thing in Muswell Hill was I never heard/saw foxes. I think everyone disposes of their food too well, or it's far enough out that the foxes are like country ones or something!

I've had a Shark upright since that first conversation here a few years ago. It replaced a Henry, and is much better and easier to use.

Seeing as there are a few new kitchens being built at the moment, could anyone use an Ikea Utrusta corner pull out?

It was great for us for a few months, but then we had to cut off part of the unit to get a cat flap fitted..

Small turmeric stain which I've scrubbed and scrubbed but I'll scrub again. It looks wonky but it's not - that's a combination of the fact the top has swung around a bit, and also that I'm bad at photography.

https://www.ikea.com/gb/en/p/utrusta-crnr-base-cabinet-pull-out-fitting-40215292/

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Have you stripped it right down - if the motor is full of crap it will slow it down.

@Fox we've currently got a wired Shark but leaving it in the flat, can't remember the model but it had an issue on suction and turns out there was an additional filter I needed to pop out (not the sponge one) as it had got covered stopping the suction. It was underneath a plastic cone which won't make any sense unless you have one! It is good for long hair as easy to take apart and pull out any blockages

@christianSpaceman I will have a look at the upright, could be a contender too

I'm surprised you can't hear the train line to the east. I'm the other side of it and I can still occasionally hear it from 900m away.

I'd say that regardless of which manufacturer a good battery powered one is much more useful than a mains one. So much more useful

It's down a steep hill from where I am and if the wind does carry it over it doesn't come into the shallow.

I didn't realise you were so close :)

Henry still the builder's choice as they'll pick up anything and are super robust.

Personally not keen on the battery powered vacuum cleaners as my concern in the longevity of the batteries.

Like @Currid mentions, I know a Henry or another plugged VC is likely that they would still be working in 5 to 10 years.

Battery technology is ridiculously good these days but whether that’s made it down to vacuum cleaners...Dunno.

We’re still on the original battery in our nearly ten year old Dyson hand held. Most of the work gets done by a Neato though. And that’s our second after the first killed its batteries and sourcing a replacement was a massive pita.

After last night's conversation on noise I installed a sound meter on my phone.

Brentford, living in a tower block next to the M4, used to be between 60-70 db even at 4am. During the day solidly 70 db.

Crouch End right now is 29 db over a 5 minute average, but when a bird outside burst into birdsong it went to 31 db max, and the min was 28db.

This is the kind of noise level where you could hear a quiet watch ticking on your arm and no road or city noise is present. It's pretty incredible that this is still London.

That and bath buns from Dunns Bakery

I mean if you spend money you can live nicely, isnt that the basis of inequality and why people outside London, hate London?