Owning your own home

Locks installed.

1 Attachment

How did you get such a good match to the other door furniture?

Bathroom is being completed next week.

Sadly the screed is still drying so they can't install the downstairs flooring until after Christmas.

Decorating has started so the plan is to complete the upper floors before Christmas (apart from the windows).

Kitchen coming on Jan 5th and windows the second week of Jan.

Potentially in the end of Jan.

Lenders that are back to doing 90% LTVs are only doing them for up to 500k. Is this a 2020 thing? or has this been a thing in the past?

We’re thinking of changing our strategy moving out chain free, then looking for a fixer upper later on in thebyear.

We’ll want to do alot of the work in the first year so will need cash to do so, which would be made easier by getting a 90% LTV.

Banham will come and do a professional survey to ensure the pieces match. It's one of the perks when you spend £1,000 on locks.

Hope your backdoor and window locks are as good because it looks like you have something worth nicking!

How are you going to complete the decorating before the windows are installed? It’s a messy job knocking out old windows and putting in new ones.

Note also that the windows Peter installed may be deeper than your current windows. My old windows were in a 5” box and the new ones come in a 150mm box so there was a good 20mm of proud window to deal with.

Always wondered about this. Does high security attract or deter thieves? I suspect the former.

Yeah they can't finish the decorating on the walls with windows, that will happen after.

Peter said our walls were the correct depth and yours weren't.

Spooky reflection

And @Sharkstar too.

After a bit of a think I arrived back to the point we were at last time I had boiler chat 2 years ago. It's not worth it for us. Rad control would be rad but pricey.

Also, when we spoke to the installation duder they said "yeah, I only have it because it's shiny gadget"

Tempted by the vaillant specific boiler controller. If only for the better programming and the ability to turn it off when (if right now) we're out and about.

Unfortunate that you were taking the photo and no one was in when parcelforce showed up.

It is a 2020 thing, and also some are limiting it to first time buyers only.

Should recover next year when lenders all start being tempted back to 90%.
Halifax bringing back 90% is massive news, which will in turn bring the other major players like Natwest and Santander back.
One of the issues over the last 6 months is that there were so few lenders doing it, that they didn’t want to basically take all the month’s 90% business, completely overload their admin systems, and their property LTV/risk profile.
Sharing 80 lenders worth of 90% applications between 4 lenders is not a good situation.

At higher loan sizes though, some lenders did increase the deposit requirements to 15% or 20% as you approached a purchase price of £1000000.

Also 90% rates are horrendous at the moment, compared to last year. Though if you do a remortgage after your property has gained in value, you may see significant LTV improvements.

If you go down this route, I’d look out for 90% no ERC tracker deals next year, as it will be worth your time remortgaging a year in after the bulk of your home improvements are done.

Those aren’t locks, this is a lock. Etc.

3 door locks seems a lot. Do you have to turn all 3 at once like you’re launching a nuclear missile?

1 Attachment

We are 'just' going to replace the frame and the door with something multipoint made from modern shiz that also looks Edwardian or something. Expecting to sell a kidney to pay for it.

Did they reinforce the hinge side too? We had some extra metal bar reinforcing parts fitted to our previous on the hinge side so that both sides of the door were more or less equally secured when it's shut.

Are you able to share the contact details of who's doing your bathroom?

The majority of thieves aren’t in the Ocean’s 11 category.

I didn’t go for the rad control. Seems OTT. The Nest is a lovely gadget though.

I can but it's the same team who's doing our extension. The tilers and plumbers are great but you might struggle unless you're fluent in Ukrainian

Ahhhhh rats, no wozza then, my Ukrainian is too rusty to be relied on to describe the finer details of my project.

I dunno - I'm pretty sure it was George Clooney that climbed our gate, knocked over a plant and smashed through the back window, only to nick a pot of loose change.

We have a shit load of packing materials and boxes if anyone is in need. W5 tho.

https://www.lfgss.com/conversations/357361/#comment15682733

I'm having the nest installed next week too. Along with the hello (doorbell) for some fancy video doorbell points.

Next up sanding down all the floorboards in the lounge and replacing the shocking job that the previous owners had done. Including a huge hole that was covered with a piece of plastic!

That’s what I call a heist

Did they shit on the bed? That's a Clooney trademark.