Owning your own home

Progress. Onto finishing the frames and doors next hopefully.

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Thats beautiful

Agreed, that's nice

Didn't realise that was yours the photo upthread. Makes you appreciate the size of it

Well jell

Is the name on the Royal Mail system?

No. All the houses round here have names and I don't think any of them come up.

So far it doesn't look dramatically different than when they took it all out (barring the repainting of the name/number). But it is cleaner, no longer feels like you can push it through with one finger and has a layer of laminate/security glass on the outside. They've finished the sanding and filling of the outside of the door. Starting on the inside today. Then they'll refit the leaded lights in the door and repaint everything and fit the furniture. Also getting a proper sized letterbox. Until now EVERYTHING gets folded in half to fit through the tiny aperture.

If anyone needs door furniture, SDS London have been great. They swapped out a letterbox tidy/flap for a security hood that was part of a set but only charged me the £2 difference in price. And they have just generally been very nice to deal with.

no longer feels like you can push it through with one finger

Please stop describing my front door. There is about 4mm of movement in some of the glass panels.

Who is doing your refurb?

Yeah, ours was shocking. With a load of broken panels. Some of the leaded lights has "security" glass, some didn't. Just having the plastic dust sheet up in the hall has raised the internal temp by about 5 degrees.

https://www.asashrepair.co.uk/

Just north of £6k for everything. A day on site removing the panels and boarding up. A month off site doing the glass repairs. About 8 or 9 days on site doing the woodwork and fitting. They are sanding the flat parts of the door back to bare wood, treating any rot and filling. Creating draught exclusion etc. All the contour work is heat gun and scraper. They're being really meticulous which I am hoping will be reflected in the end product. I offered them the dining room to work in because of the shit weather, but they insisted they are ok under their gazebo and the porch as they didn't want to make a mess. Their clean up at the end of each day is unreal also.

We bought the door furniture ourselves from SDS using their trade discount (15%), and are supplying the paint. But they are doing everything else and supplied/fitted the locks. They gave us a choice of ERA or Banham. We went with ERA because even though the glass is more secure than it was, it's still glass right next to the lock. I have glass break sensors on our alarm system. The ERA locks do seem beefy though. They also got a custom brass step nose made that they will likely fit last.

No. All the houses round here have names and I don't think any of them come up.

Here's a hack to get the name in the royal mail database if you want it - order a new broadband service to your house specifying the name of the house. If you're ordering through an Openreach-based ISP (which is most of them), the ISP will send your house name to Openreach who'll send it to Post Office, and add it as a record at the point of installation. After a few weeks it'll show up on PAF (which is the post office database which drives most internet searches) and then propagate out into Ordinance Survey etc.

there most likely won't be one if that old - the foundations aren't that deep generally from speaking to a builder friend

Thanks, I'll give them a call.

What's the current hip version of Aesop soap?

Ideally microbrand and UK.

Cheers

@amey and @chrisbmx116

Do it!

https://www.montamonta.com/

Refills!

Lacura

Srsly tho get castille soap, some essential tea tree and citronella oil, mix and you have aesop-ish smell. Fill in the edgiest soap container you can get.

Has anyone had solar panels fitted to their roof (or similar)?

We are going to do some roof work and it might be an opportunity to get something like this done. We have a fairly large flat roof that in theory gets a fair bit of sun.

blarg

You don't generally need planning permission for solar PV systems. The big exceptions are if your property has a flat roof,

EWS1 news: A flat in my building was just valued by Barclays. Not at £0

Great news! (unless it was for £1)

Yeah, seems to be good news.

Timing is a fucker though. I have tenants in now and there's been a water leak which is going to make the flat need a redecorate

Do you know why?

They didn't say "we don't think an EWS1 is needed for reason x", their valuer just provided a valuation inline with the market .

Still good news, but it would be nice to hear them say for sure they aren't going to ask for the ews1 on buildings under 18 meters or the like.