Owning your own home

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  • Speaking of filth left by vendors, we've just spent about £500 getting someone to clear and take away approx. 20 years of crap out from behind 2 garages. Hundreds of tiles, car tyres, bits of filing cabinets, lino, etc. 5 van loads in all. It wasn't a part of the property we had looked at prior to offer or completion and ideally we should have taken photos before we started work. Any chance of recourse a month after completion?

  • wall paper steamers

    a few summers back had an infestation, ended up steaming them to all death
    had no problem at all since
    the steam permeates the mattress and the base and kills everything eggs etc

    did it again 2 weeks later just to be sure nothing survived the first blitz
    shift all furniture and hoover well to get rid of anything left over in the carpet

  • Yeah, this is what I initially thought but we stripped all the wallpaper, carpet, re-plastered and then re-floored the room. I've been out of the country 4/5 times this year so thought it could be that. Apparently public transport is the main way they are caught.

    @dicki you just steamed everything?

  • pretty much
    took off the big plastic thing on the end of the hose and used it as one might use a stream cleaner
    good strong jet of steam permeates deep into the mattress
    the latent heat of steam means it's a very power heat source
    the bugs usually hang around the edges of the mattress / base so relatively easy to get at

  • Any recommendations on places to find decent/interesting second hand/vintage furniture (e.g. chest of drawers, bookshelves, mirrors etc)?

  • I've found ebay to be the best hunting ground. Yes, it's a pain; but it's a big market and you can find stuff for reasonable £.

  • @chris0 - Etsy, Pamono, eBay.de, Danish Homestore...

  • I've found all our nice furniture from much checking of reclamation places, charity furniture shops, car boots, etc. Hard graft has netted some nice stuff for very little, but price very much ∝ time spent searching. Local gumtree is good, but you've got to be dead quick.

  • British Heart Foundation furniture stores.

    95% shit but there are some gems if you hunt.

    And obvs out of London car boot sales. Around Watford seems to be the epicentre.

  • To combine two discussion points: 2nd hand furniture is also a source of bedbugs! As well as bed frames they also like to hide in the nooks and crevices of bedroom furniture. So be wary: turn the new furniture upside down, pull out the drawers, etc: look out for collections of tiny black spots (their excrement, basically curdled human blood) clustered around hiding places - they'll slip into any gap around 1-2mm.

  • Good tip. This may be a stoopid question, but are they likely to turn up in any furniture, or is there actually a good reason they're called bed bugs?

    Never knowingly had them, but we do acquire a lot of old furniture.

  • They tend to prefer being around beds because that's where they're mostly likely to get a regular meal. When growing they need to have a blood meal every few days. Once adults they can feed only once a year (!) and so in the cases of large infestations they may well migrate to the lounge and hide in the sofa etc.

  • When growing they need to have a blood meal every few days. Once adults they can feed only once a year (!)

    Tory Leadership thread >>>>>>>

  • At the risk of essentially repeating duncs' post, they sound like a right bunch of little turds!

  • Oh you're not wrong. As you may infer, my knowledge of them stems from bitter experience. A former flatmate had a massive infestation in her room that had become so bad that her net curtains were black from the bugs and their mess. She and her gf were 'immune' to the bites - i.e. they didn't itch or swell at all, so they just carried on living in there oblivious. It was only when the bugs had nowhere else to hide in her room that they spread to another flatmate's room, she got bitten, and we discovered the problem. It would have cost hundreds and hundreds to get pest control in to deal with such a massive problem, so I took it upon myself to sort it. Nine months later they were all finally gone. If you miss just one then a few weeks later there will be another shedload of offspring. Those foggers etc are useless because the bugs will just run away and hide in the skirting boards or other hideaways. The only solution is painstaking dismantling of everything and continual repeated treatment. Every fortnight we would strip her bed and kill all the ones we found - wish we'd had a steamer actually because that would have quickened things up a bit.

    I'd use my knowledge to set up a pest control business if I could bear the sight (and smell - they stink like almonds when they're loads of them) of a bb again.

  • I think it might be time to think about buying a house. I have a reasonable amount for a deposit and a good opportunity to save a fair bit more over the next few months. I am however pretty clueless. Who am I best to speak to at this point to find out what size mortgage I should be looking at/can afford, a bank? Or a broker? At this point I really just need an outline so I can work out my price range and online calculators all seem pretty unspecific. Any help or advice appreciated!

  • Depends on your situation (employment etc.) but if you aren't that clued up best bet is to go with a broker. Just make sure they are whole of market.

  • oh and @WjPrince dad is a broker who is currently helping us out with a very complex and convoluted mortgage.

  • If you want a rough calc as to feasability then I'd just plug the numbers into here and play about a bit to see what you can afford, what repayments will be, etc https://www.landc.co.uk/calculators/

  • Dear recent home-purchasers. I'm about to go down the route of buying a place for around £300,000 (with a 5%/£15,000) deposit. In your experience, what were your total additional costs on top of the mortgage? Have tried to piece together the pieces but anything obvious I'm overlooking here?

    I'm anticipating the following;

    Valuation/Application fee for mortgage - £460 (according to mortgage broker)
    Stamp duty - £5,000
    Solicitor fees - £2,000?
    Surveyor fee - £500

    Total = just shy of £8,000.

    How does that tally with your own experiences?

    Cheers!

  • Oh, and I have a broker who seems decent but I don't really have any reason to trust (nor distrust!) his ability - anybody in a position to recommend a solid broker?

  • Solicitors fees are a bit high, should be able to get £1000 inclusive of searches. But then you could easily spend that grand you just saved on a removal van with packing service.

  • Any recommendations for a trusted removalist? Moving from a 2 bed flat in SE23 to a 4 bed flat in Kentfordshire mid august

  • Couple of friends have used this guy and had good things to say
    Jeff Codrington - 07889 680980

    And I recommended him on Bikeradar based on that, and he got another good writeup
    http://www.bikeradar.com/forums/viewtopi­c.php?f=40012&t=12871022

  • Don't forget to factor in moving costs, temporary storage (if required) and immediate decoration costs (if needed)

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Owning your own home

Posted by Avatar for Hobo @Hobo

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