Owning your own home

For me, second regular oven and basic microwave in the cupboard. Or in fact what we do have, which is the second oven being a steam oven. 2 proper ovens is great for big roast dinners, christmas etc.

Have recently got the same, would have used the second oven a lot more had we both been going to office as we used to try to roast lots of veg at once

I don't have a £40k kitchen but I do have a combination microwave oven and it's really useful. It's rare that I want to cook two really big things so a second oven is bigger than needed. The smaller microwave combination oven also means that it doesn't need to pre-heat which is good for cooking small stuff.

2 ovens and a normal microwave.
2 ovens are great for when some of your dinner needs a different temperature to the rest.
We have a 90cm range cooker with a 60cm fan oven and a 30cm regular one. Very handy once we bought 22cm oven trays and dishes for the thin one.

Fancy microwaves with all the features only get used for normal microwave things because it's always impossible to remember how to make any of the fancy things work. We have had a Sharp combi microwave grill thing for over 10 years and have never once used the grill bit. No idea how.

Fancy microwaves with all the features only get used for normal microwave things because it's always impossible to remember how to make any of the fancy things work.

I used to be the same with my old one. Current Panasonic one just has a button saying convection oven which activates the oven and changes the temperature. It does of course have countless other shit (I think you can oven and microwave simultaneously somehow for stuff like baked potatoes) that I don't understand and never use.

lot of people on Big Dinners itt

Process of buying a place.. first solicitor left with no warning.. second solicitor has just told me today that she is leaving tomorrow.. I've lost the plot completely with this

Lol we had this exact same scenario. Managed to the phone number a senior partner and suggested that this was Taking The Piss and that I was Not Very Happy. Went smoothly from then on.

if you can't stretch to a 2nd oven/don't have space consider a proving drawer. really handy for big dinners when some stuff is cooked first and you just wan to keep it warm or whatever

Process of buying a place.. first solicitor left with no warning.. second solicitor has just told me today that she is leaving tomorrow.. I've lost the plot completely with this

I'll give it a go. £2k pls

Lol we had this exact same scenario. Managed to the phone number a senior partner and suggested that this was Taking The Piss and that I was Not Very Happy. Went smoothly from then on.

Yeah I've just escalated it to the head of conveyancing, hopefully that speeds them up as the first of my searches expires in 2 weeks LOL (it is not lol at all)

I'll give it a go. £2k pls

If you can answer your phone more than once a fortnight you will already be doing a better job

Reading this thread makes me realise how lucky I was with my solicitor (and grateful to whoever it was on here that recommended him).

Perfect timing, currently looking for a solicitor for the purchase of a property in North London. Any recommendations.

Continuing on from the 'gap between my new skirting and wall is cavernous' saga, next instalment is 'holding up a straight edge to a newly plastered wall is impossible as the wall deviates at two different angles where the scrim tape meets'.

I'm at my wit's end. Surely, surely a newly boarded and plastered wall should be straight, at the very least?!

I have the main contractor in tomorrow. Am I overreacting to point out:

• angle of wall changes where boards have been joined
  
• board joins are clearly visible through the skim
  
• plaster is exceptionally rough around the edges of the room (like it's been painted on?)
  
• at least one screw head visible through the skim
  
• slim feels very thin to the touch. I'm no expert of course, but this skin doesn't have tha lt lovely 'glassy' feel to it - instead it's like the paper applied to the surface of the boards.
  
  

I'm simply going to point out that reasonable skill and care has not been taken in the work and I expect a reskim(?) and skirting etc refitted at no extra cost. I'll be withholding 10% of contract price until then. No issues there, right? Would a reskim (by a different plasterer...) be helpful at all?

I don't think being a conveyancing executive or solicitor is a particularly fun or rewarding job at the moment, so I've noticed that there is a lot of staff turnover.

They are most likely going to be in the process of moving firm right now...

I am not sure how helpful this is but I have had a lot of walls skimmed recently and they have all been wonderfully smooth and glassy and flat to the point where I wonder how on earth it is possible to get it so flat and smooth.

On the one occasion a wall was not like that, before I even said anything, the lead guy noticed it, pointed it out to me, apologised, got somebody in to fix it, and said he wouldn't be using the guy who had done it poorly again.

So basically, I will now be expecting that level of quality/service again in future. Not sure how common it is though

second oven and standard microwave

If you're a decent plasterer then that's what you'd expect. I reckon @allsop builders are just using some general trades to try and bang out the last of the job - if you can see joins and screws in the plaster then it's a shit job and not worth paying for

In a bedroom I'd go for nice soft luxe carpet - sisal and seagrass look good and are hard wearing but they don't feel super nice on yer feet. Which after a nice hot bubble bath and face mask is what I want from my bedroom carpet

I suppose one of the pitfalls of appointing a main contractor and allowing then to sub out with no control. Just a bit of a disaster really - gets you down!

Keep yer chin up - they will hopefully still make it good and then in 6m you’ll have forgotten all about the stress!

And if not you can just post on here and rant some more about it!

It was David wasn’t it? I recommended him. That said someone else I recommended him too he didn’t take on as was going commercial, which having known him for ages I find hard to believe.