Owning your own home

Just go for a Bosch one in the £600-800 region and you're gold.

I have a Bosch from 2015 that's been faultless and doesn't seem to be missing any important features. I can't find the exact price, but certainly no more than £500.

3 votes for Bosch, works for me 👍

Cheers all!

After

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Lovely

Nice. Happy with em?

Nice, just remember if you're getting the ground floor ones done to ensure the wood holding the sashes in on the inside is done with security in mind.

A friend had an attempted burglary last year and the trick they used was to push the sash windows in from the outside (without breaking the glass) as the inside track of wood that creates the channel the sash sits in (I'm sure there's better terminology than this) was just a 5mm thin piece of wood tacked on with a few small tacks and probably more held on by layers of paint.

Apparently the burglars are trying various windows from the outside to see which ones have the right give in them that means the wood on the inside is nailed on with nails/tacks pointing to the outside world rather than parallel to the glass.

So far, yeah. Although my full experience has been opening them to air the glue fumes as ms_com is laid up with a (unrelated) migraine so am on dad duty until bed time. But the look of the finish (again, more intensive scrutiny required in day light, sans child) is way better than I was expecting. They crafted the surround in situ. The sliding sash panels on the two openers both tilt inwards for cleaning and I think they look good, for uPVC.

Now just have almost exactly the same set up to go in the living room on the floor below and three separate windows in three other rooms. They reckon two more days.

They're uPVC so security (along with sound and thermal characteristics and maintenance) was one of the reasons we went for those over wood (as well as the tears that were shed when they said how much wood would cost).

Openers all have opening restrictors on them too due to mini_com and the security issue.

https://www.zoopla.co.uk/for-sale/details/57710148

Is that a full house @cozey @6pt ?

Certainly looks like it from the floorplan.

And they've done a fair bit with it since they bought it
https://www.rightmove.co.uk/house-prices/detailMatching.html?prop=49832560&sale=72976080&country=england

Looks lovely, some money though.

Reckon some glam shots of WFH areas in houses will become a thing in sales listings .

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Or maybe that’s just an office that has always been so..which is nice

Nah, that's their front room.

So... the last few days I had a couple of small jobs I needed doing and I couldn't remember what website was good for getting fast quotes and trades out for things... so I did a comparison.

The jobs:
1) Roofer or handyman (with ladder): Replace an old iron downpipe with a modern PVC one, replace the hopper too... my estimate £150-250.
2) Plumber: Disconnect a freestanding bath from all plumbing, wait 1 day (for painting behind the bath to occur), reconnect the bath whilst replacing the waste trap and extending the existing waste pipe to ensure a better fit, ensure no leaks... my estimate £75-200 (depending mostly on how far they need to come and how much they penalise coming out twice for small things).

The websites:

• Bark: https://www.bark.com/en/gb/
  
• MyBuilder: https://www.mybuilder.com/
  
• Rated People: https://www.ratedpeople.com/
  
  

I listed both jobs with same description and photos on all three sites.

Responses:

• Bark = 3 plumbers, 2 roofers, all contacted my within 1-2 hours of the listing. I chose the roofer from these responses and he charged £200 and was on-site next morning and job complete within a couple of hours. His normal rate was £150 for this, but I was asking him to travel outside of his normal working area at short notice so I offered more. Bark was excellent, all of those who got in touch are paying Bark to contact me... so they actively sought the job. I have a feeling that this model means Bark is far better for medium and larger jobs rather than small ones like the ones I had and that they read the job description before contacting you. I'm not sure they're shown your location, I suspect the matchmaking is done on them entering "I'm willing to work in these areas - enters all of London and surrounds" and my post code just being within that... might be true for large jobs of a week or more, probably not true of jobs that take an hour.
  
• MyBuilder = 3 plumbers, no roofers/handymen. 2 of the plumbers were a waste of time, one quoted £30 but asked if he could do it on the 27th (2 weeks into the future, and reconnect the week later)... I chose to approach this differently and googled local plumbers on Google Maps, then found them in MyBuilder, then invited the closest to quote me. This led to a chap named Georges, who quoted £100 all-in including the minor parts, and lives local so didn't mind the nature of a small job split over days. MyBuilder seems better for small and medium jobs but there seems to be a few dodgy trades on there who are trying to win business on responding fastest rather than actually understanding the job, they look like hustlers and that's not a great look. Would warily use MyBuilder again, but only for very basic small stuff that doesn't suit Bark.
  
• RatedPeople = 1 roofer, no responses for plumbing. The roofer was a joke too, I'm way outside his working area and that fact was in the listing. Wouldn't use at all.
  
  

Of all of them then... Bark were superb and the trades all seemed of a good standard, and within a day I had a number of quotes. None needed to visit to quote, which for the nature of the jobs I had is correct... photos and detailed descriptions were all that were needed. The trades mostly contact you by phone, so after listing the job don't go into work meetings because you will get called. Would work great for larger jobs that take multiple days or weeks. For jobs that take a few hours, I was lucky... but some might not wish to travel far for that.

MyBuilder... good for small common jobs, but be wary. Definitely do not hire the first people to respond as you have 5 people you can invite and these jokers block your list. There are good people on there, they're most likely working and will ping you in the evening.

MyBuilder has a limit on how many tradespeople can reply to a job so the job poster doesn't get bombarded. It can encourage that reply first ask questions later situation but the ones that do it will quickly get annoyed and stop after a few in a row where they reply first then find out they missed some key details because they didn't read it properly.

£1.2 million for a house in Eltham. Fuck that.

The real irony is that prices have gone up so much round here, they could have easily doubled their money without spending a penny on the place

@amey will enjoy this before/after. It is only a shame there isn’t an accompanying Instagram account and some Burrill on the walls.

The distant roar of the a2 is a bit like being by the sea.

please do not tag me in (the bad and hated) london content

Brilliant comparison, never even heard of Bark, but will have a peak.
Would agree with conclusion around Mybuilder, found the current bathroom fitter on there and he is great but had to ignore the first batch of jokers who offered to quote who blatantly didn't read the job spec.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/feb/16/home-wood-burning-biggest-cause-particle-pollution-fires?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Other

It found almost half of those burning indoors were affluent and many chose a fire for aesthetic reasons, rather than heat.

(facepalm.jpg)