Owning your own home

Did not see that coming

Great to see the hipster spice route became a well worn path to cargo bikes, Boden and Miele..

I love places like that, where someone just gave no fucks and just went for it.

I’m always intrigued about the journey.

Did they start with buying just one chair and it escalated? Did they paint the ceiling or did they put it up for quote on ratedpeople? Why are they moving after putting so much effort in?

Or murdered people.

"No onward chain"

Three of the most beautiful words known to man and God.

The madness of my property dabblings continues. I'm currently sitting on my living room floor which has no furniture in it. The bedrooms have no beds, only mattresses on the floor. It all kinda looks like a squat. The contents of my house has been carted away by easy storage today.

Aiming to do a simultaneous exchange and completion on my sale on Friday and complete on the house we are moving to end of march. Living with the in laws in the interim.

I absolutely hate all of this fucking about. Absolutely hate it.

Brutal - it has been a long road for you! I hope it gets sorted and you are in end of March. What a mess house transactions are in this country.

My wife reminded me today that despite all the aggro we are very fortunate we can do what we are doing. I need to remind myself of that more often.

I'm finding it slightly hard to reflect on my good fortune whilst sitting on the floor with the cat. He doesn't know yet he's checking into an £8.95 a night cat hotel in romford shortly.

Ha! Amazing. Kitchen, yep, bedroom, yep, BOOM INYOURFACE. It's not for me, but I sort of admire it.

Poor cat

completely bizarre

That’s a good price for a cat hotel

Has anyone ever removed an en suite bathroom?

We have an en suite bathroom off our master bedroom and I absolutely despise it to the point that we’ve just locked the door and don’t really use it anymore.

It has an electric shower which absolutely destroys our electricity bill (it’s reduced by 20 a month since we stopped using it), and the whole room needs the mould scrubbed off the surfaces every week. I’m aware that once mould gets into plasterboard it’s impossible to kill, so the obvious route would be to just redecorate and re plaster the walls, but we’re considering repurposing it into a laundry room (as it already has a hefty feed for the shower).

Is that a terrible idea?

If you don't like it / use it and will use it when turned into something else then it's not a bad idea.

It will definitely affect the resale value / appeal though.

Hopefully that’ll be offset by putting 2 more bedrooms and a master bathroom in our loft :)

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Converted ours into a bike room. No looking back - it'll sell as a third/infant's bedroom, when it comes to it.

I suppose the only concern is that the current master en suite will eventually be a guest bedroom once we go into the loft, and parents have pointed out that they’d like their own bathroom when they visit

parents have pointed out that they’d like their own bathroom when they visit

Many other hotels are available.

On a less flippant note, is it worth redoing the en-suite for such occasional use? Especially if you're having damp/mould problems already...

How big is the en suite? Could you partition a bit off for a washer/dryer and still have room for the shower/toilet. If it's going to be a guest bedroom I think it would definitley be a negative to get rid of it, plus when it's redecorated, if it's only being used occasionally when guest are there mold shouldn't be an issue.

I'd lean towards re-doing the en-suit so that it isn't shit tbh.

Presence of an electric shower suggests it wasn't done properly the first time around, and now it's your job to fix the mess.

Turn into utility and never have to put up with parents staying again = winner

Given how quickly you say mould forms it sounds like something is fundamentally wrong with the bathroom install. Out of curiosity does the mould appear low down then creep up the walls, or does it start high up and come down? Is there a window in there or is it a typical afterthought pit of despair type en-suite with no natural light?

Whatever you choose to do you are looking at a medium sized job:

Keep as bathroom

1. Remove (and re-use?) bahroom suite
   
2. Tear out and re-do walls, consider backing all tiles with wediboard or similar
   
3. Fix any plumbing boo-boos and install an efficient in-line extractor that is controlled by a hydrostat
   
4. Re-instate bathroom re-tile and re-finish
   
   

Convert to utility

1. Tear out bathroom.
   
2. Pull up floor to cap and/or redirect waste to desired location
   
3. Tear out walls
   
4. Bring in electrics to room for sockets etc (I don't know if it would be possible to use the feed for the shower by lowering the rating of the fuse on the CU you'd have to ask @Airhead or @Nef )
   
5. replaster walls
   
6. fit units / worktop /sink
   
   

Either way you are looking at spending a decent chunk of change, without knowing the specifics of your property I'd say keeping the en-suite would be the cheaper option.

It does sound like you've made your mind up, but playing devils advocate moar en-suite bathrooms = moar value in the head of most estate agents.

afterthought pit of despair type en-suite with no natural light

hey! I want to put one of these in.

Will you still have a bathroom or WC downstairs?

Yeh we’ve a master bathroom downstairs that will become a utility room and w/c, with master bathroom upstairs.