Owning your own home

This is excellent advice. I don’t think the en suite is an afterthought m but the ventilation definitely is. There is no window/natural light but it is at the gable end of the house.

Hard to tell if the mould starts on the walls and creeps up, because by the time I notice it, it’s on the walls and the ceiling. There is an extractor but it’s obviously not up to the job.

In that case I'd say you want at least a shower downstairs. Can you combine the laundry room and utility room leaving space for a shower in the current master bath?
That's similar to what we are doing to our current bathroom (including a proper extractor fan), though our two bedrooms upstairs will both be en-suite so it's a bit of a different situation

Realistically yes, we absolutely could, I’m just thinking of a short term solution for a laundry room if it would work out cheaper than an en suite remodel, but if it won’t then it’s a no go

Also have the hatred for ensuite. A 3am shite should not be smell-able from where you sleep. Since the dawn of humans, we would always go off somewhere away from where the pack sleeps, its just common sense.

I've seen a few, and literally a few, ensuite where it makes sense (big master bedroom on one floor/attic conversion) where its laid out well and exceuted well. But solid 98% that i've ever seen, especially on older houses that have them jammed in a hardboard cupboard type affair, are just a joke*

*This is also after helping various mates, with various leaking ensuites of their own, and upstairs neighbours where masticated and lightly pressurized shite has been blowing through their ceiling from upstairs neighbours who fail to understand how pipes work. This has happened to at least 4 mates, and each time I've sworn I would never knowingly live under a flat that has a relocated (to wrong side of building from the soil pipes, or has a masticator pump job to pump out an internally built bathroom/ensuite) as the chaos and filth is honestly horrific.

En suites work best if you have a dressing room in between the bedroom and bathroom to give you a second door to seal the nighttime poo smell away.

#40kgolfclubdressingroom

People seem to have forgotten that shit doesn't go round corners very well at all.

Pooping in the ensuite / under the stairs toilets is an offence punishable by death IMHO

Unless it's a toddler doing it in which case just be thankful its happening in a bathroom of some kind an not in their pants / on the carpet

It's better than it falling off in the middle of the night, or onto someone, as it was slowly starting to peel away from the brick. That said, it would feel much better if the guys doing it had turned up this morning. It would be nice if there wasn't a hole into the front room when it starts raining again (ah, Manchester...).

Our downstairs loo is in the open plan kitchen / dining area.

The 5 year old leaves the door open.

A 3am shite should not be smell-able from where you sleep

You normally sleep surrounded by your own gaseous emissions, why is it different if it comes from having recently "dropped the kids off at the pool"?

Totally with you on the macerators though, and they can be noisy fucking things.

requires a degree of cosmetic upgrading

https://www.rightmove.co.uk/properties/120914081#/?channel=RES_BUY

It's like trainspotting (wrong city I know) if you replaced the heroin with acid.

Anyone got any experience of being squeezed in the middle of a chain?

I've got a first-time buyer buying my place who wants everything done super quick, and I've got my vendors who're moving into a new build and being super vague about when that might happen.

In the event that our buyer wants a firm moving date but our vendor can't commit to a date

Either:

1. We pull out entirely ( but we don't want to do this a the house we're buying is great)
   
2. We stand firm, but our buyer pulls out (we need to market ours again and have to deal with explaining all the stuff with the cavity wall insulation nonsense to a new buyer)
   
3. We break chain and run the risk of:
   a. Renting for a long time, hanging around for our vendors
   b. Our vendors changing their mind for whatever reason and us having to house-search again
   
   

Can we break the chain and also get some kind of commitment from the vendors? We're happy to rent / stay with family for a bit, just not interminably.

and also get some kind of commitment from the vendors

Sadly that would mean them getting some commitment from a new-build house builder who make estate agents look like intelligent angels

I don’t have experience of this exactly - have been in the same situation and we just applied pressure and everyone waited!

I don’t think there is much you can get that is any real comfort other than exchanging contracts to buy - technically you could do that with a process to nominate a completion date in the future, but i am not sure of the issues that might pose (e.g. for any mortgage you need, plus you’d still potentially need to find somewhere to stay in the interim and wouldn’t have certainty how long for)

Ha, excellent. I maybe meant whether the vendors would commit to X date, and if it got delayed past that date then it would be their problem to move out into rental - but now I've written that out I can't see that happening.

I'll take advice from my solicitor on what's possible. Out of interest, how long did everyone wait for?

Complete on the sale of our house yesterday. We decided to move ourselves and borrowed a van, yes it saved us £2500 but I am now crippled. Now to move into rented flat while the purchase goes through - complications due to the garage being on a different deed which is a bit boring.

Any advice on the easiest way to repair this fascia?
The outer edge is layered which makes removing paint even more tricky.

2 Attachments

Phew - in roof news, it all seems pretty solid after all. A few bits to be patched but no new roof needed though the main water ingress point still uncertain. Chimneys to be checked next.

I do love having nerdy specialists round. This chap was from a copper roof family business, following in his dad's footsteps. "Ah", he says, "Wasn't expecting to see that. This must have been one of the first long strip copper roofs in the country. Was almost certainly our company as there were only 2 in the country who had developed (blah blah technical stuff) in the early 60s." There followed fairly lengthy roof chat (on his part) and nodding/uh-huhing (on my part).

About 4 months for us. And everyone said we were very patient to let it go that far…

Just put the ball in your buyer’s court.

You could threaten to pull out from the purchase if your sellers won’t exchange contracts for a date but there’s not much in it for them to do so really.

I do love having nerdy specialists round

Yep! I could listen to/watch experts in almost anything doing/talking about their particular handiwork

Strip it back to the wood with an IR stripper. I did a massive one last year. It can be quite time consuming depending on what you were hoping for.