Owning your own home

Shaun Kayum. Really impressed. I'll DM you his number

@lowbrows I might be saying something quite obvious, excuses, but have you checked installer and guarantee? Our windows came with a 10 year so if anything happened I would call them first

This is over 15years old and the installer doesn't exist anymore.
We're talking 3mx 2m sheets of glass.

I just got a text from my mortgage company telling me Storm Eunice is coming and how to be prepared... Boarding and plastic sheets are storm-proof windows anyway

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Depends how fancy it is. There are doors, and there are DOOOOOORS.

Most doors need some kind of work to make them fit for purpose again.

If you have an inner and outer door on your house then you can afford to have one or other of them both original and be in slightly less than ideal condition, because you have two doors to stop the weather from coming inside.
If you just have one, first would get your frame and surrounding materials thoroughly well prodded. I just discovered a window that I wasn't planning on replacing was held up by completely rotten wood and a single dab of silicon adhesive.

Restoring doors properly, most 'front' exterior quality doors from the 1880-1920 period that 'look right' on older houses in 'as found in a skip' condition should go for (when its not you that found it in a skip) £80-400. More than that would suggest its an absolute baller door, or a full on chancer. If its missing hardware, glass and the wood also needs work, keep looking.

Speaking of rotten door frames, a prod recently revealed that a load of architrave around mine is thoroughly rotten and, although it hasn't spread to the bit holding the door up yet, I assume it will only get worse.

Who should I be looking to get in to fix this? Builder, carpenter, handyman, etc? Any recommendations for anyone in North London?

While you're at it I am also looking for a South East London carpenter to make a wardrobe in case any one knows someone.

Finally got our remortgage with a new lender approved after around 3 months. Let the transformation begin (well not right away)👍🏼

We ended up buying them for a bit less than asking but still significantly overpriced, both way over £400. It was one of those “These are the type of doors we have been looking for, taken a few weeks to find them, how much on top is it worth to us to not have to carry on looking?” decisions. We have builders doing the work so spending weeks looking for the right door at the right price is going to knock everything else out.

Nice! Congrats. We just got the approval for mortgage ourselves. After every step that feels like you are wet bandit in home alone while they get to charge you 4.4% (it's an off-shore mortgage it's either not great rate or half a price of the house for down payment) it barely feels like victory.

cheers - we secured a 5 year fixed at a good rate so can breath a bit now...
Thinking of installing a wind turbine and solar panels!!

I've seen it mentioned here recently but wanted to triple check - if a neighbours tree has branches that cross the property line I can prune them, fine with that. Question I have is regarding disposal of the branches and so on - what I have seen mentioned is that I can drop them over the fence. Ignoring the angry-neighbour part of this, is it legally correct or an urban myth?

Logically I’d think if they become your responsibility when they cross the boundary, you’re also responsible for getting rid of them. When is dropping them back over ever going to end well!?

When is dropping them back over ever going to end well!?

When you want to play your hardest passive aggressive game

Still not going to end well

The neighbour has a very well kept garden, with a neatly pruned tree and some decorative ivy, both against a wall that defines the end of their property.

Both the tree and the ivy flow up and over the wall, and then spread out to totally cover the roofs of four garages, creating a thick matt of creeper that suckers onto the roof membrane with an accompanying canopy of thick branches that provide a home for multiple families of foxes.

I'm in the process of cutting this back, and will be hiring a chipper from HSS to dispose of the waste.

In future I'll keep it under control by going up on the roof and cutting off everything that comes over the wall in terms of shoots/suckers/etc.

I (quite strongly) think that the neighbour should have extended their careful pruning to what vanished over their wall, but they obviously thought that was out of scope - ok, I'll deal with that.

But once I've done the work and sent the chipper back to HSS I'm tempted to take a fairly direct approach to disposal of the unwanted vegetative advances that the neighbour is making toward our garages.

Have you spoken to them about it?

In London? Are you mad?

Also, what do I say - "Your laziness has caused me five days of graft and a few hundred quid of costs, please keep your plants under control in future?"

"Your laziness has caused me five days of graft and a few hundred quid of costs, please keep your plants under control in future?"

That seems pretty reasonable TBH

Could punch them in the cock after you've said it I guess

Lost one small ish tree onto our garage already here in Somerset...

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I'd be having that conversation first, before spending five days on it. Our downstairs neighbour's ivy was all up our house, stopping us fitting new windows. After a bit of back and forth he agreed to pay for the scaf tower and builder's time to remove it. It's since been cut at the root.

I just want it done, and in my experience the most direct route to achieving that goal is to do it myself.

I spoke with all the owners of the properties which converge on our boundary - we have trees that grow over boundary and so do they. I just said that I will maintain everything within my boundary and they were ok with doing the same. With stand alone garages its not like you really know who they belong to, so I can see why they didn’t go to the bother of pruning past their boundary. A friendly word is what’s needed - I mean actually friendly rather than London friendly

I hope this doesn’t squash our garden pod thing...

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