Owning your own home

That’s fair. If it definitely needs to get out of the way sometimes then I’d probably improvise a solution with eye bolts in the wall up top and on the floor and some angled tube holders on the wall then cantilever a canvas roof using poles, para cord and carabiners but understand that might be a little ray mears for everyone’s taste. I grew up with a retractable shade thingy at our house and never liked its wobbly overcomplicated vibe. Rope and canvas ftw!

https://www.keyclampstore.com/male-90-degree-corner-swivel-169-a-27

All the solid wall council houses near me have had theirs done so maybe find a local association and ask them?

Or look at the planning portal to see if any whole roads have been approved for works?

My terraced house had this electric retractable awning fitted in the side return. I didnt use it so took it down. If this is of any use, you can have it if you can pick up from Norwich.

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Anyone got a recommendations on London based movers?

Isn't there a firm that advertises during the Tour in the ITV daytime slots with retractable awnings?

Crocodile or Alligator or something?

Tommy Walsh thinks they're ok.

Hope you're settled in the new place.

You can get modern, controlled by your phone etc storage heaters. EG Dimplex Quantum, They are likely to be cheaper to heat the house than other electric heaters as they’ll use the night rate to heat the blocks. IE replace old with new.

Alternatively you’re getting electric radiators (which come in a variety, look like regular rads or fancier looking “electric” specific vibes), convection heaters (probably a flat panel but quite thick, with a grill at the top that hot air comes out of), or an IR panel (flat panel thinner, zaps out infrared like the sun and warms “the things not the air” so the wall opposite or a sofa etc.)

As far as I can tell it is mostly marketing BS as to which is best and they all work fine but electricity is more expensive than using gas to heat your home.

I would say go for whatever you fancy, I went for a mix of cheap IR and convection (from eBay/Robert dyas sale can’t remember) that use the same Tuya interface, and then replaced my storage heaters with modern ones, but they’re branded (second hand) fancy Dimplex.

Edit: the disadvantage is that the Dimplex lot use one app and the rest use another. I could have bought all Dimplex panel heaters as well, but it was expensive. I think there are two other sublicensed brands that do the same Dimplex heaters for less. One is sun-something-or-other. #helpful.

I have the Quantum storage heaters in my flat, much better than the old style ones with the crude controls and they leak way less heat so you still have heat in the evenings when it’s needed most. You can’t even buy old style ones as the regs mean you must have full control of output and a thermostat not a bi-metallic strip and a dial with numbers on that has no bearing on how warm it will be.

Green Man & Van were great with us last time

Thanks for the heater info, both. I have passed this info on to "Procurement" for further analysis.

https://www.knightfrank.co.uk/properties/residential/for-sale/isle-of-coll-argyll-and-bute-pa78/edn012315318

Anyone wanna chip in for a holiday home?

I can have a fish down the back of the sofa for 50 acres.

I’ve already found 12p. Getting there

Price-wise, it's around the same, if you are planning on repointing & rendering in lime.

You may need to have the roof extended, however, to cover the extra width - this
adds to the price a lot, a far as I've found out. Also, nobody seems to know how this goes down with planning, although to be fair, I didn't go into that rabbit hole too deeply.

Although that would probably work better, realistically something that takes more than a minute or two to put up and isn't self-contained isn't going to happen.

@benjaminbunny cheers for the offer but I don't think I'll be anywhere near Norwich any time soon.

@tbc just having had a quick google it seems that is a price on application kind of place which I assume means it is expensive (or at least more expensive than my cheap budget).

I used https://www.storkremovals.co.uk/ and was very happy with them.

Would recommend getting them to pack stuff too.

We used F Smith and son and were happy. Communicative, showed up exactly when they said they would, and all good lads. And they were careful with bikes without having to be prompted.

We used Grays https://www.graysstorageandremovals.com
who were great, took all the stress out of packing and on the removal day the boss called me ‘sir’ and was super polite and everything was ‘no problem’.
funniest part of the process (though not at the time) was my partners psychotic downstairs neighbour had stuck a ‘do not park here’ note to the paintwork of the packers van which would not come off and left a residue, she appeared on move day and started getting shitty despite me having spoken to her previously and defusing the situation plus notifying her of times of vans and access etc.
The boss switched into full honey badger mode and tore a strip off the bitch but not before “please go inside sir, we will deal with any issues”.
looked outside and she was there with a bowl of hot soapy water trying to get the glue of his van.

That's great

I got a quote from Grays In 2021. They were insanely professional and were the only lot that came out to look at the house.

Their quote was 1k more than anyone else which meant I couldn't use them - they were very obviously the real deal. I think their quote was around 2200 something like that.

I ended up using easy storage which cost me 750 Inc tips which was an absolute bargain.

I used Peglers - think @tbc might have also. Found them really nice and easy to deal with. Price was middle of range

We'd just had a baby when we moved using Stork. We'd not sorted anything out so just asked them to pack everything. Whilst unpacking we came to some neatly wrapped package in a box which we discovered was the baby's umbilical cord that they had packed up for us.

We used Peglers again for the recent move - I think we got one other quote which was double the price which meant going with what we knew made even more sense.

Our experience wasn't as smooth this time but that's mostly down to our situation I think - we still didn't know on the day we moved if we were moving our stuff to our house or a storage facility. Pegler were keen for us to use their storage facility, which admittedly would have been quite a bit cheaper - but also was in Essex, 140km from where we were moving to in Oxford.

Apparently they had told the guys actually doing the move that they'd be loading up and then driving to Essex, so when we told them we definitely weren't, but that we didn't yet know exactly where we were going, they were a bit frustrated.

Basically it was a hugely stressful day and very little of it was down to them, but I wouldn't recommend them as unreservedly as before.

3.5 years later but when I think back to things that we had to spend on for our move of London the sterling that went to Grays removals was the most satisfying. Reckon worth paying bit extra for without a doubt

Money spent on quality removals is worth every penny. When I moved last year we got some cheap outfit of the Internet, they hadn't sized anything properly and I had to hire a transit on the day and pack half of the stuff myself. I don't have any recommendations other than maybe a firm at the receiving end will be cheaper than someone in London. When we moved to High Wycombe 10 years ago from London we used a local firm (ABC), they came to London to visit and quote and where very good