Owning your own home

I can't believe someone installed a boiler under a corrugated plastic roof.

I think it's more the principle that you don't know how well it was done until you've bought it and found later that it wasn't well done. Maybe that one is fine, maybe not. Taken in context with the rest of the house I would lean towards probably suspect given the lack of modernisation and weirdness elsewhere. i.e. putting a boiler in a lean to with a corrugated plastic roof.

Just skim reading but... the price to get the one you are looking at to the standard of the done up is at least 50k if nothing unforeseen comes up.

You'll 100% need all the electrics redone straight off the bat, and thats a can of worms itself...

Street looks lovely with a church at the end!

edit: wrong reply, sorry, meant @bobble

@chrisbmx116 cheers. The church has been converted into a climbing wall which is ace. I do know a really good electrician which helps.
Will take some photos of the electrics for him to peruse

Purdown is host to a vicious local Cross race.

There are a shed load of trails if you head south. If you want big, there's Belmont (you can ride the non jump line on an XC bike no problem)

Just down the hill from there is Bourton Combe, some great trails there. That ridgeline is riddled with trails

Out of interest what is that £50k for, is that including loft conversion, totally replacing kitchen and bathrooms etc?

For what it's worth I paid £1800 on electrics when I moved into my place, which were an absolute state. That included general inspection/fault testing/condition report, a new RCBO, fixing some sockets, installing mains smoke alarms throughout, installing an outdoor light and socket in the garden, and fault finding/repairing/rewiring most of the ground floor.

Everything we've spent or are spending currently on our house just down the road from that one, over 4 years, including electrics as above, new kitchen, knocking through a structural wall, new shower X1 and a full new bathroom, new radiators on the ground floor, building a new toilet under the stairs, quite a lot of hard landscaping in the garden, new windows and doors on the ground floor, a lot of work on the drains and external rendering, etc, etc, etc, still won't come to half your £50k.

Fuck sake you aren't going to get in the golf thread with this kind of chat!

(for what it's worth I agree that to get house a to house b wouldn't take £50k largely because house b has just had a lick of paint. I don't think house b is a sensible target because it's fucked in other ways that you wouldn't want to model)

This talk of totally reasonable provincial house-sorting costs is warming my heart. more of it please.

Yeah, was including loft with that, which I really can't see getting done for less than 25K no matter where you live (my uncle did his own over 5 years and it cost about that).

But then if you are local your estimates are prob closer to local prices.

I was thinking...
Basic loft at 30-35k.
Kitchen 40k obvs, but at a push 5k.
Bathroom 5k.
Electrics and heating 2-4k
Redecorating whole place 2k.

And my bikes have all been second hand apart from a Pompino and Voodoo Bizango, and I drive a 15 year old Skoda. I've not really thought of myself like this before but maybe I'm cheap?

Our loft was done already and I am forever grateful for that though.

Bathroom 5k.

4k just on tiles?

There's no loft on the house B!
I don't want to be lumped into the golf chat thread, but the loft would be a substantial cost.

Ah! I read your comment as 'There is this one terrible thing you should know about loft conversions'.

As it turns out, our loft conversion has ended up being a piece of trash. Along with pretty much everything else in the house. That said, it has been somewhat therapeutic to smash lots of things up and buy a circular saw, so...

They have to reflect the light just right

Based on the assumption its only 2 sqm of tiles.

Can anyone recommend a North London plumber, Islington, please?

I don't even think wi-fi cooker hoods have made it to the provinces yet

This one?

https://microcosm.app/out/7H2qi

I guess so, in that the structure hasn't been done, it's just been converted in to a livable space.

Looks like a proper job no?
Unlike the lean to...

I was trying to understand why you said there was no loft on that house, that's all.

To all intents and purposes, it looks like a 'proper job' of converting the loft in to a livable space. There's no flat roof extension - some surveyors might even say, 'well, this isn't a bedroom...'.

Maybe I'm failing at multi tasking... there isnt any sort of loft on house a but there is loft bedroom on house b.

Sorry if I am not making sense, it's been a long week...

Obviously bear in mind that not everything needs to be done straightaway.

Damp, electrics, anything dangerous to you/the structure need sorting but you may decide you can live with a crappy bathroom or old windows for a while. When I moved into my last place the windows were flagged as something that needed sorting, I finally did them 8 years later (admittedly they were held together with duct tape at that point).

I think I'm stuck, the Mrs not unreasonably wants to be able to continue cycling to work which means we have to stay in London, but London prices mean that we can't buy the type of house (garage, garden) that would motivate me to go through the pain of moving, and of course pay a much larger mortgage.

Could someone make large houses in for e.g. Kew much cheaper?

who with?

Nationwide.

We originally went with them as we hadn't been in the UK long enough for most other lenders. Previous 5yr fixed was at 2.7ish I think.

Worth noting though that we're down 65% LTV now, which has an impact.