Owning your own home

The location of your street should give you a pretty good idea I’d have thought.

It looks as though I'm going to be replacing the worktop instead.

How fucked is it? Photos?

Not very, to be fair, and still very much usable.

It's manky where it overhangs the sink (because no drip edge, ffs...), with a small bit of rot in the corner, and the tap hole has had to be epoxied up.

I mostly hate it out of principle.

It's manky where it overhangs the sink (because no drip edge, ffs...), with a small bit of rot in the corner, and the tap hole has had to be epoxied up.

Sounds familiar.

Ours was pretty fucked but a day spent on it with scrapers / sanders / filler / wax oil bought it back to life.

I mostly hate it out of principle.

Fair. If the install is sub standard then the wood is going to really suffer.

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Learned a lot whilst doing it and would do a much better job next time. But it doesn't fill me with rage looking at it now.

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Better ? Well they have a nice blue enamel lining to the ovens. As with bikes, if you’re shit at cooking a £10k oven is not going to stop you burning food.

More expensive, massively so...it’s not just the appliance price though it’s the bespoke cabinets you need to house the integrated stuff.

I have a catalog at home so will see if it has the prices but I seem to remember that single ovens start at £5k and ranges £10k and go up from there. Fridge / Freezers are £ 10-15k. You’d need to be looking at 6 figure kitchens to justify the costs.

Just been reading through the restrictive covenants on the new property I'm hoping to purchase. This one has ruined a childhood dream:
NOT to set up on said last mentioned pieces or parcels of land any steam engine

Not even a small one? Disappointing

Fuck me! I had assumed that to a large extent their stuff is popular because its from America and therefore a little bit different.

Just read something about their fridges weighing 300kg!

Nothing about nuclear reactors?

A friend of mine bought a house with a fridge which is something like subzero.
The enclosure was made for the fridge, which is bespoke, so if it breaks and they have to replace it, it will cost at least £8k.

And that's not including a freezer.

Nothing about nuclear reactors?

Just an exotic steam engine

The covenants are from 1900 so I'm not sure if that was an issue. I am allowed to run a florists from the property though.

Get those gladioli planted I guess.
Apparently we're not allowed to have a caravan according to our paperwork

We’re not allowed to keep sheep (or be a ‘nuisance’ to neighbours).

Ours is running a brewery

Making bricks on the land is also ruled out after 1901. More interestingly, you're not allowed to split the house into flats:

AND that every house to be erected upon land thereby assessed should be one self contained house only and should not be built with a view to its being occupied or let in separate tenements or flats with separate staircases or entrances thereto.

Subject of course to discharge or modification under section 610 of the Housing Act 1985.

Of course.

The property I'm looking at is showing is High risk of flooding from surface water on the flood risk map https://flood-warning-information.service.gov.uk/long-term-flood-risk/map?

Quite surprising as it's just a standard London street and I hadn't noticed anything in the past few months even though it's been pissing it down.

What are the implications of this? Is it just increased premiums for insurance or am I potentially open to other issues?

I mostly hate it out of principle.

I've seen you post about this before. So I'm really curious as to what about this design is fundamentally inferior?

Asides from the material choice, to me the issue looks like the tap, not the sink... and to some extent wiping up excess water.

If it was over, then surely you'd have water build up on top where the sink meets the wood? Which would only be solved by wiping up excess water.

Water splashes up under the lip of the countertop, between the sink & the wood.

Any water on top is going to go over the lip, and, absent of any drip groove, leave a whole load of water.

You can wipe up the excess, of course, but unless you dry with hairdrier, there's always going to be dampness, and that's going to lead to mould and rot.

Even if you slap on a load of silicone sealant, that's going to go the same way, and likely exacerbate the problem, as it comes away from the wood and holds moisture against the wood for longer, preventing it from drying out.

At least it's not chipboard & laminate, which is about the only worse surface choice.

[Edit] Also, I just think it's a bollocks choice for a heavily used kitchen. Sure, it looks pretty, but you're not going to want to kneed bread on it, and it's too warm to make puff pastry.

What are the implications of this? Is it just increased premiums for insurance or am I potentially open to other issues?

You will have fewer insurance provider options. But the market is quite big, so you should still be able to get cover. Might be worth doing a fake quote now with a couple of providers.

Makes sense.

I've had mixed experience; a mate's we lived at where there were issues with the draining section, but not the underside, and my folks which is still flawless. Going to look under the lip of my folks out of curiosity now.

We have chipboard & laminate which is swelling from a cheap SS "on-top" sink. My OH asked how to fix it... errr… replace it.

A shadow gap would have hidden all the poo in the shadows.

Dodged a bullet.

Water splashes up under the lip of the countertop, between the sink & the wood.

I did wonder about this but it doesn't seem to cause any problems with ours. At least, not quite as bad / obvious problems as our neglect of the worktop and failure to fix a leaky tap in good time caused.