Owning your own home

Could be worse. Cycliste's employer, many years ago, was offering a property for sale deep in the Swiss forests. No leccy, no running water, no vehicular access, and a hike of many hours to the nearest road. Nice views though, apparently.

So a helicopter ride in then for any good Swiss.

3 weeks in and we're binning off the solicitor firm we instructed, they're absolutely useless. The single email reply we've had is when they said they couldn't open the .zip file of all the documents they asked us to fill in and scan. We've tried calling probably close to 100 times now and never had the phone picked up. Let's hope it's easy to swap over to a different solicitor.

in hindsight i wish we'd done the same - did you go somewhere local or via the agents' referral system? we did the latter, regrettably, and would 100% chose somewhere i could walk in if there's a next time.

case in point - just found out the land registry stuff has been updated thanks to rightmove, no word from the solicitors about it. paid the £3 to double-check our names were indeed on it..!

Let's hope it's easy to swap over to a different solicitor

I'm sure you've already thought of this but it's worth keeping the selling agent informed. Our solicitors changed name through our purchase (the firm was bought) and the sellers spent a few days freaking out (threatening to go back on the market etc) because they thought we had stopped paying our solicitors.

We used a website to get quotes then chose one of them. Not the cheapest but apparently still crap. We're going to use the one my partner used when she bought the first place, she said they were slow but got it done and there's an online portal to see the status of everything.

Yeah they'll be first to know once we've got it all set up

Our exchange date was delayed from Friday to tomorrow (lol, hopefully) for a 4-day-later-friday completion date. As a show of good faith our conveyancers have waived their £200-whatever same-week-completion fee but they're still getting a one star review when it's all done.

I have a window that needs work and my neighbour is not keen on me having a workperson get near his porch. Not sure what to do. Any ideas? They can't work on it without

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What a bell end. Straight to bastard neighbours thread.

Cherry picker

Or as he said make sure 'nobody' is working off the structure, just get the scaffolders to put the scaffold on it. You won't make friends but hy ho.

Yeah. I'm pally with him when I see him outside but this is annoying me. The structure is sound. There is no way to get to the window without putting a bit of weight on it and he suggested I get it fixed. Might just say I'll leave the window to fall out on your porch

Anyone got a spare £1.25m plus refurbishment budget?

https://www.rightmove.co.uk/properties/1­24090823

Funnily enough they don't mention why it has recently come on to the market...

https://www.helensburghadvertiser.co.uk/news/19492648.knockderry-castle-siblings-lose-court-battle-eviction-bid/

[EDIT] Ah, Brommers did...

How were you handling access, scaffolding would seem appropriate, even the most careful tradesman would want protection against breaking that glass roof light. I would insist on covering it with a sheet of ply.

If I had this kind of text from someone I would assure them you will leave it clean and tell them you are having a scaffold lift installed above the floor level and the glass will be protected with an 18mm ply sheet.

The scaffold could have feet to spread load or put some ply under it.

If you had been planning ladder access that would seem very optimistic.

I would have plenty of concerns about working in that area.

glass roof light

Try a change of perspective.

Took me a while my brain was determined!

I would still expect a scaffold platform to be the answer there so you shouldn't be on his porch and he's only asking that you leave it clean which is fair enough given the record a lot of trades have.

I don't read it as a hostile 'no' - more don't stand on the roof and tidy up, which seems ok? Is there a way to board across the top of the porch?

Where does rain water drain to? 🤔

Having had a slate roof fucked up by next doors builders walking on it I’m with your neighbour (who didn’t seem that arsey) better to keep other peoples builders off one’s property than try and sort out the fuck ups later.

Where does water drain to?

This way I reckon

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I replaced the panes in our Crittal windows to gas filled double glazed units. We were on the 6th floor and I did ask around but the response was that I’d need scaffolding, which was not cheap (it was also triple aspect). It was pretty straightforward, assuming you don’t mind leaning out of windows and handling big heavy panes of glass, it also cost @ £750 in glass and other stuff, made a big difference though. Obviously the one thing it doesn’t fix is the fact the frame itself is a cold bridge so we’d still get a ton of condensation on the frame. The price you pay for living in that kind of place.

that’s interesting. i did contact a firm which specialised in crittall, from memory their glazing was about 12mm (4mm/4argon/4mm) but they said the windows couldn’t be done as they were the wrong type.
They are not the gridded 6 or 8 pane type but large centre tilt 1.25m Sq and side/top openings lights.
The centre tilting means the big panes would be easy to do as they will be horizontal and half in the flat but the weight would be considerable.
Think the frames are not deep enough but i find that odd as they look deeper than the 6x panes in the house I grew up in with Crittall.

Nobody else in the 7 other blocks has done a straight glazing replacement, if a firm (without scaffolding and not 20k) did there would be a lot of people interested, at least with secondary we can remove it without much hassle if/when somebody can do double glazed units.

Yeah, it might not be an option, these were ours.

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Largest pane was 1125 x 545 mm, 12mm depth. Came from a place called pane-less (👏)

nice. a door like that will cost a fortune to be made now.
are they back to galvanised? was thinking of stripping ours and priming them (zinc plumbate) and then seeing how we liked them grey and then painting grey or white after living with them for a while.
Secondary glazing will maybe be dove grey as the stock white is very white and will stand out next to the terrazzo sill and grey (if we go for that) crittall frames.

this is potentially all a bit moot as a shitty email is being sent tomorrow “pull your fucking finger out, complete within a week or it’s all off” :-/

I am the building with the stained window needing work. I have booked a tall scaffold tower and going to hope for the best. They are going to have to stand the porch structure I think