Owning your own home

Fingers crossed for you too!

I'm interested from a legal point if things are held up.

Gotcha. Good luck, hope it works out for you.

Due to move on Friday. Might be out by the skin of our teeth...but I don't really think so. Unless our bastard vendor refuses to move.

This was from the previous legislation:

6.—(1) During the emergency period, no person may leave the place where they are living without reasonable excuse.
(2) For the purposes of paragraph (1), a reasonable excuse includes the need—
...
(l) to move house where reasonably necessary;

Fingers crossed it's the same this time round. We're due to move on Thursday 12th to Northern Ireland.

By the time you move Northern Ireland could be an independent soverign state with a newly anointed King/Queen, a part of the Europe Union and you'll be paying through the nose to import your stuff from the British backwater.

We went to see two properties today, the cottage in West Hoathly with the great garden, huge shed and recent studio, and the mid-century modern place in Kenley.

Just after we arrived we were told that an asking price offer had been made for the West Hoathly place, and that we'd need to beat that by Monday if we wanted to stay in contention.

I really liked the place, still, but a couple of things were on my mind - one, I think it'd a fantastic summer residence, but when (as it was today) it was absolutely pissing down then going down into the garden to for e.g. work on your bike in the shed would be a significant test of motivation. I think your enjoyment of your own home (federated as it would be over half an acre of grounds) would be strongly linked to the prevailing weather that day. Two, my girlfriend would be working in London still, and had started to explore staying with her sister for at least half the week to make the commute less hellish - which is unfair and counter productive, and made me rule the place out.

I can wear wellies as a matter of habit, I can't make Mitcham closer to East Grinstead.

Onto the second place - the photographs flatter to deceive, it's quite run down, water stains everywhere, but it's a great size and it's got great potential. I love that the vast majority of it's period features are still there. The garden has been levelled (presumably when the property was built, into a hillside), which has lead to (an ominously bulging, propped up with scaffold poles) retaining wall around the western edge of the garden. To give you some sense of scale, the retaining wall is around 9' tall.

But that's all resolvable, and there was a surprise bonus - a patch of land, clearly belonging to the property, that wasn't in the listing and would make a perfect workshop/shed/study location without losing any of the existing garden space. It's already got a double garage, and plentiful off-street parking, and the (theoretical) new workshop would be accessed on metalled surfaces from the road, so very easy to move stuff in and out.

The place needs work, but I can do the work - or be the cause of the work in others.

They've had an offer for it, but the EA wouldn't say what it was, other than "not asking price".

However - I like to be able to walk from my house to a cafe, a pub, a high street environment, and Kenley doesn't appear to have anything like that. I think that for a coffee and a paper you'd be in the car, driving to Purley, and I'd hate that.

I've been turning it over in my mind and I don't think I can get away from this desire for, and lack of, local community. I also suspect that the only way of getting to the house is to walk up a single track road that doesn't have a pavement - such is the "if you want to go anywhere you get in the car" nature of the place.

If I've managed to miss a thriving little high street in Kenley please let me know, otherwise I think neither of these places are a goer.

You're right about no nightlife in Kenley. Caterham on the Hill high street used to have 4 or 5 pubs. If you are not drinking alcohol they might not be the kind of pubs/cafes that you are used to. Its normal to travel to pubs/restaurants in Surrey, you might enjoy a drive in the car. Once you make some friends in a place like Kenley you go to their garage for a cup of tea and a look at their mental car project :)

I knew the ceiling in our master bedroom had a crack but I wasn't expecting this...

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Pink cabbage in Mayfield does decent flat white.

https://www.rightmove.co.uk/properties/93211235#/

Go to bed Luda!

We had a big storm yesterday, my mates had softball sized hail coming through their roof... They only moved in just before the first lockdown, terrible luck... Total destruction...

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Does hail that big kill people? It could right?

Absolutely it could, yeah!

I think the ceilings broke the impact but they eventually came down with the weight of water and hail... Bit mental...

We got pea sized hail, mad amounts of rain tho'...

I saw some of the pics of the hailstones, gnarly softball sized things. I've only ever seen golfball sized stuff up close and on impact the sound was like a drum corps. Cannot imagine the noise of the ones near you.

Your gaff / garden come away unscathed?

I don't think mine is weather damage. No sign of water ingress and the loft above was converted about 7 years ago.

I think my ceiling was just old and knackered :-(

Are you going to take down the lathes and board it or will you find a plasterer to render and skim some lime over the top?

#CSB incoming...

When my dad first moved to France he lived in Clermont-Ferrand. He saw a car covered all over in massive cricket ball sized dents. He asked someone, and replied "hail". So he assumed it was a different use of the word.

First hail storm had golf ball sized chunks of ice coming down.

He said people did get injured.

Bloody hell! Is that darker patch damp?

Don't know yet. The room has built in cupboards which we never liked and are also fairly knackered. We really need to strip it back and start again and if we do that then pulling down the lathes makes sense to me. Just getting the ceiling patched will be quick and easy though.

We really need to strip all four bedrooms, replace some windows, rebuild the front bay window (just the 1st floor, height is too shallow so doesn't let in much light especially since it faces North, also had no insulation so gets very cold and lots of condensation in the winter), might as well rewire while we are there (some bits of the house are on a fairly modern board with RCD etc, not those bedrooms which have fuse wire and not enough sockets), probably add some thermal insulation to the walls, new carpet etc.

Need to find a builder.

We were fine, couple of dead branches came down and had a small lake out the back for an hour or two but all good... It was a GREAT storm!! 🤩

But the broadband in our street is still down... That is, obvs, a horrific state of affairs... 🤯

I don't think so, all seems dry. I assumed that first but then changed my mind. Will investigate further when I can make more noise later.

@Howard @spenceey
(The latter less likely to be affected)
Last LD allowed moves. This is “less restrictive” according to our bleached tangerine.
I’m hoping our move goes ahead, 12th November.
I’m sure the lawyers will be happy...

There are only a few things that I miss about living here - Storms with thunder and lightning are one of them.

Nothing quite like a bright green flash of lightning over your house followed immediately by the full on crack/boom of an immense window shaking thunderclap. There is no drama to the rain here.

@jellybaby Board and skim the entire ceiling after removing the cupboards is easy enough.