Owning your own home

Will they also be removing and refitting guttering? It's not a fun spend but seems ballpark to me.

one bit of guttering would need taking off above the small bay maybe? but the chunky bit of work is the apex thing ( i do not have the terminology). porch not part of the quote as its rotting and needs a whole separate project

also not in london so hopefully avoiding any london tax though its south coast so not gonna be far off

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actually i bet there's all that underneath business too, the planks running parallel to the ground. its a shit job isnt it

There is a fair chunk of work there for sure. Especially with the wood around porch/windows.

If you're worried the quote is a little high, can you get another 1 or 2 quotes?

yeah I'm trying, though I really struggled to find anyone (which also plays into the value). Hopefully I'll hear back from the one other company that looks remotely legit, I just wondered whether it was going to be a unanimous 'that's crazy' from folk on here

ah well, its preventative maintenance and so on, better this than getting all that stuff replaced when it rots and falls through our car windscreen

You could always get a quote for replacement to see if that's better value with only a slight uplift?

Or find a general "DIY guy" ?

I couldn't really figure it out. Seems a bit high for the woodwork I can see in the picture but cheap for the porch. Maybe access is complicated. Surprised that they would be quoting for external work at the moment anyway, would make sense to leave it until next spring/summer.

Maybe they just don't fancy it right now and I can understand why, being up a ladder in this weather is no fun.

the driveway is maybe not the most appealing thing to put a platform on, so maybe that's a factor.

We're SW facing and about 100 yards from the sea so I'm paranoid about the woodwork being killed off this winter, no idea how long its been since it last had some attention

It's impossible to say from the pictures the condition but the flaking paint and denatured wood underneath wouldn't look like that big an issue in London, when you're that close to the sea it might be more of a problem. Very often the worst areas are still covered with paint, just rotten underneath the paint!

Are they including a scaffold in that price rather than doing it off a ladder?

Yeah sorry but as the forum approve sage on these matters it had to be done 😊 I also thought about the time of year and if you’re near the sea then corr that’s a job best put off until the dry weather.

My mother had soffits/facias done 2 years ago, not dis-similar and also near the sea (Norfolk). She paid £1500 but summer time. So accounting for a south coast tax and inflation I think 2kish would seem maybe closer to the mark (but hers didn’t need any rotten wood fixing)

It would piss me off no end paying £3k for getting that done.

What saddens me is that it probably will cost £3k to get that done in London.

By the sea....eh I'd expect less tbh.

How long would it take you to earn £3k? If you can hire a platform it's basic but boring fucking work TBH, but at least that way if you fuck it up you've only yourself to blame, not scathing because you've paid folk good money to mess it up.

Where's the rot in the porch?

We just got all soffits and fascias removed and replaced, and new guttering installed, for £4k.

£3k just for painting sounds like a lot.

The money is in the labour and probably scaffold.

So I'd expect repainting to not be too different bar the material cost

If the wood is OK can it be over boarded and cut to size instead of sanding and trying to make good with what is there?

I'm trying to forget the last 5 weeks of window repairs at the moment. The good one of them looked like this :-

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Wow.
I wanna see an after shot now.

I am tossing up the idea of renting a platform (cheap locally) and at least weatherproofing it myself. Might feel more appealing when this storm has moved on. The quote was based on a few mins observation at street level, and photos.

The porch is proper fucked in a couple of spots, long period of blocked gutters before we moved in. One of the uprights needs to be mostly/entirely replaced, one of the cills too.

I'm guessing that people who do a lot of external decorating would give a much better price in February than they would at the end of the summer.

Maybe just finished a busy season and don't fancy it hence the price.

I don't take a lot of photos because of client privacy but I've got an intermediate stage with no glass or paint and a finished one from a distance.

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From my relatively small sample size, based on the work I see 1 year is not long enough for serious deterioration by 'normal' weather. You are either looking a problems that need cutting out and replacing or simple cracking paint and denatured wood.

I prefer to completely strip areas with a lot of cracking paint, especially if it's a lot of old layers. I use an IR stripper to make this practically possible to achieve relatively quickly but it could still take a couple of days. There's no other way to do it that guarantees a really durable paint finish.Otherwise you chip out the flaking paint, fill and paint over. It's acceptable but you'll probably see new problems emerging with the old paint within a few years.

I do worry about the lack of maintenance that went on before we moved in (6 feet of solid compost in a guttering downpipe x2, for eg) but that is reassuring, thanks.

I have an infrared stripper and all the other tools, plus I’m about to go freelance and probably fail to get enough work so maybe that’s the way I should go!

Appreciate the insight, thanks

Sounds like a good plan to have a go yourself. It's pretty satisfying work. If you run into really rotten wood then an epoxy resin like Dry Flex from Repaircare is very useful for splicing in new wood.

Anyone tall and thin looking for an expensive house?

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Ha, great advertising that.

Looks a bit more normal in reality: https://www.rightmove.co.uk/properties/138537839#/?channel=RES_BUY