Owning your own home

Old is fine. It likely just needs maintaining.

Adding the extension may well have caused the problems, particularly with the shonky habits of the 60s.

^^^^ called it with the binoculars and the concrete slabs.

heard that

The buyer's mortgage offer has been sent to the freeholder's solicitor for their approval. It is now a month and they still haven't approved. This is now the main issue holding up our process.

It is a one bedroom flat with noe special provisions or issues so things really should be quite forward. Before I write to the freeholder telling them they are a bunch of cunts, what sort of turnaround time would you suggest as a benchmark? I.e. that this process normally takes 5 - 10 working days or whatever.

#howlongisapieceofstring

Thanks everyone for your advice!
Fingers crossed all goes well.

we're getting 2 metres of fabric that we want stretched over a wooden frame so we can sling it up on the wall. is this something a traditional framer would do? tempted to do it myself but it'll be an expensive mistake if i arse it up, which i definitely will.

Maybe look for someone who makes canvases?

It's easy, work from the centre outwards... Check YouTube, buy some canvas pliers and DIY...

Another week gone by another week with zero progress.

Still not even entered discussion with the vendor after finding out about the major eorks notice over two weeks ago.

Solicitors have done literally nothing for us as far as I can see this week

Have you called them?
Solicitors have, usually, a timeline to work to and lots of other stuff. They may tell you you're important to them, but you're not really. Have you been into their office or did you just call them to employ the
Give them a call.

Oh we’ve emailed them.
Emailed manager who said they’d get onto it.
When we get on the phone we can never get put through to our solicitor or their manager as theyre permanently ‘busy’

Yeah, this is standard triage procedure for understaffed solicitors. Expect them to go on ‘holiday’ soon as well...

Probably easiest to buy a stretcher with canvas attached (so it's properly tensioned) and send it and the material to a furniture upholsterers to have it attached. If that's all too expensive the diy route is possible. Most carpenters can make a custom size frame for you but stretchers have a special joint at the corners that allows for a little extra tension to be applied once the canvas is in place, that joint also prevents racking in the frame under tension.

see there's no way i woulda known that. yeah imma get a pro.

oh don't worry we already had that.

few weeks in our solicitor went away for 2 and a half weeks. we got passed back to her when she got back last tuesday when she 'got back'.

My solicitor quit without telling any of their clients. Keep at it, it'll all be fine in the end (unless it's not).

I called mine daily for several weeks - calling back if they were 'busy'.

At the time I wasn't sure if I was just doing it to make myself feel like I was progressing things. As the process went on, it became clear that if I didn't chase them on stuff constantly then it just wouldn't get done.

Yup.
I'm afraid you just have to make yourself the person they want to stop hearing from all fucking day long.

Oh ffs.

We were supposed to be completing on a mortgage today and just received an email from the lender's solicitor saying that they made a mistake on the case, will be re-keying the application and that there will be "a delay". On completion day. After two months of doing exactly what they ask.

Sigh.

WTF? Sounds well shit.

Does that put you in any breach of the contracts re: exchange to completion etc?

Is there a 'solicitors are cunts' thread? Because I would subscribe

Anyone know anything about carpets?

Got a quote of just over £3k to remove old carpet, supply and fit new underlay and carpet:
2 small bedrooms
1 medium bedroom
One small hall and single flight of stairs
One small / medium living room

I got some carpet samples sent to me from suppliers and chose a 50oz wool one. Quote is from a local independent place (not London).
Anything to bear in mind?

In my mind I had a slightly smaller figure but I guess as there are 4 rooms plus stairs maybe that's about right?

We were quoted £2.5kish for 1 big bedroom, hall and stairs and a big living room/diner so sounds reasonable. Will probably be cheaper if you're happy to remove carpet yourself. Why wool? 80/20 twist seems to be the best of both worlds.

I think it's 90% wool. It just seemed like the nicest out of the samples I got in the post. So not exactly scientific.

Edit - just checked and actually it is 80/20 wool/other stuff.

bunch of cunts, all of them.

That's reasonable for that quality of carpet. Obvs depends entirely on dimensions but we paid about £4k all in for 2 big rooms (30m2 each), a smaller room and a long hallway. 60oz 80/20 hobby with top-end felt and rubber underlay, fitting, threshold bars etc. Worth spending on quality, I reckon - still looked great after 4 years and 2 young kids.