First-time house renovation

ukmaggie45

Hi Folks,

We've hit something of a snag with the house, I've posted a new thread here.

Basically our insurance company refuses to insure the house since we won't be living in it as we want to get the work done before moving in. :mad:

Reason I am so mad is we've insured our current house with them for the 36 years we''ve lived here (despite them not being particularly cheap) and OH worked for them, is one of their pensioners.

Thought I'd post here as some of you lot have had houses that were not inhabited while work was done on them, so thought you might have ideas as to how we might proceed.

Prob best to reply on the other thread so as to not clutter this one up with off topic stuff.

One idea is to move the minimum bed and a couple of chairs in and stay there at weekends so that it's not empty for longer than 30 days. The 30 day thing seems to be common to most insurance companies.

I realise we may have to go to a specialist broker, but thought it was at least worth asking here.

We had the damp and timber survey done on Thursday, since vendor wanted EA to be there while surveyor was we went along. Survey showed rather more damp than we were "expecting" :rolleyes: but the house hasn't really been lived in for nearly 3 years we think - owner was in a Nursing home, and so only in use when daughter or stepsons came to visit every 6 weeks or so. So I suspect things will improve somewhat when we can get the central heating running for a time every day.

I'm thinking we will probably go for a positive ventilation system in the loft, surveyor said if we do it would be best to go for one with heating.

Any advice on how to find an architect? While we have some ideas of what we'd like to do with the house we're not sure how feasible they are, also an architect is likely to be able to come up with ideas that we wouldn't have thought of I suspect!

Hope you're all hard at it this weekend, and remember TM and I expect LOTS OF PHOTOS!

LisaLou, so sorry to hear about your Gran. I hope that the funeral wasn't too painful for you. Hugs.

TM, hope TD is doing OK, and hope you can get to visit without problems from all the wild weather.

Maggie

andrew-b

ukmaggie45 wrote: »

Reason I am so mad is we've insured our current house with them for the 36 years we''ve lived here (despite them not being particularly cheap) and OH worked for them, is one of their pensioners.

Loyalty means nothing to many companies today and they rarely pay it back in any way! Simply move to a different insurer. I reassess our insurance every year and have switched company every single year to chase the best deals and cashbacks.

ukmaggie45

andrew-b wrote: »

Loyalty means nothing to many companies today and they rarely pay it back in any way! Simply move to a different insurer. I reassess our insurance every year and have switched company every single year to chase the best deals and cashbacks.

Hi Andy,

What really gets my goat is that I'm a shareholder too (via my parents' estates) and my Dad worked for them for about 50 years too. I'm thinking of a letter to their chief executive. Doubt it will make any difference but at least it'll make me feel better! :rolleyes:

Maggie

Edit: My grandfather was The Secretary of one of the companies that over the years have amalgamated to form this company, and did his 50 years for them too.

lisal0u

Hiya,

Latecmer & Maggie, thanks for the condolences and hugs! The funeral wasn't as bad as I thought it was going to be. My brother took his 1 year old little girl as my Gran loved her to bits and it lightened the moment! Especially when she started to clap when we were singing hymns.

latecomer wrote: »

What kind of flooring are you fitting?

We are fitting engineered oak flooring. We had to go for engineered because of the underfloor heating. It was pretty reasonable too, £938 for 35m2. Cheaper then the carpet upstairs!! It looks lovely if I do say so myself

Been laying it today and its gone pretty well, almost finished the livingroom so just got the hallway to go!

Maggie - We have unoccupied insurance and there arent that many companes that will do it. In the end we went with Halifax as its who we have our mortgage with and was just easier. Its not cheap though and is costing us about £36/month!

Im hoping that we will have the flooring finished tomorrow so ill take some piccys and update my blog!

Our Christmas moving in deadline is getting closer and weve still got lots to do! Its going to be non stop from now on!

Hope you are all having good weekends!
Lisa x

helping_hubby

wallbash wrote: »

You are not escaping your diy tasks that easy , you must try !

The problem with my front door was the weight , solid hardwood , weighed a ton.

I have tried plastering , made a real mess ..... leave it to the professionals.
Bricklaying .... too slow ...leave it to the professionals.

Gas :eek: leave it to the professionals.

Roofs too high leave it to the professionals.

But urge everyone else to DIY for other work,

We have done lots of DIY I promise! Hubby fitted the kitchen worktops, sink and taps! And I've done small bits of plastering and laid a patio!

I've basically given up now - especially as the house is 99% there, and can't bear the thought of having doors and tools hanging around for weeks. Will be nice to get a job done in one day. Fingers crossed he turns up.

Some good news - the council put a fence up at the bottom of our opposite neighbours garden so the view is so much better. Am very happy. If they do manage to get the Kia garage to remove the barbed wire that will be the icing on top of the cake for me.

wallbash

especially as the house is 99% there

Great news , time to sell and start again ?

TomsMom

Hi guys, I've not been ignoring you, I've not been around much the last few days, DD has been this weekend and we've been to see TD and had a little girlie shopping too :j . I've also done some craft shopping on the 'net as I'm going to try and get back into my card making hobby again, with everything that's been going on it's taken a back seat for about 18 months.

Lisalou Condolences re your gran. I bet everyone loved it when your little neice clapped. Funerals don't have to be all doom and gloom, I see them as a celebration of life before and a return to wherever you believe your spiritual home to be. My dad's funeral was a hoot (the after bit I mean), he would have loved it with all the tale-telling from his older brother about what they got up to as kids!

Maggie Difficult about the insurance, we had a shock at the cost when we were looking into it. We got around it in the end by the fact that the builders were actually in occupation five days a week and we visited every day including weekends, so we just took out ordinary insurance rather then the special "no-one's living there while it's being renovated" type". Not sure if it was actually the right thing to do but it worked out OK for us.

Helping-hubby I'm glad you're a lot happier about the view now. Fingers crossed the barbed wire gets removed from the Kia garage.

TD has been very up and down this week with blood and mineral levels. He's had transfusions, booster injections for his white cells, potassium and magnesium supplements and lots of IV fluids. The weather has been diabolical so I wasn't able to get to see him mid-week as I normally would so had to wait until yesterday. Physio has given him a little pedalling machine and some rubber strips attached to the end of the bed to pull himself up to strengthen his arms and he's getting on fine with those. He's also getting massages - feet and back. He actually got out of bed and walked out of his room along the corridor a bit yesterday when we left, we tempted him with the Christmas tree that has been put up so he wanted to see that. He's weak but did better than I thought :T . No talk about when he can come home yet but he's been told that they don't think he'll be strong enough to go to Bristol for a clinic appointment on 9 December, his Dr thinks it's too much to do the journey there and back in one day so they will try and get this postponed.

I'm still waiting for the builders to come and sort out the leaks. Can't blame them for not coming last week but the delay did us a favour of sorts. Instead of the original one (or was it two) leak(s) in the loft, there are now three big patches on the floor where the rain has leaked in plus two patches under the large window. Plus there is now a leak from the sun roof ceiling where it joins the lounge wall, that would be from where the sloping sun room roof meets the vertical dormer wall. We're convinced that the heavy rain was blown in at an unusual angle by the strong winds, something that would not happen normally. So it's shown up a few vulnerable spots which should mean the builders will check all around the windows, we think it's all come through round the flashings and the flashing connected with the sun room roof.

Hope you're all having a good weekend.

suisidevw

Need to catch up on the last few pages guys, seems like there are some big changes happening!

Had a great DIY weekend, laid the granite hearth nice and level on a bed of pug, and build up in the fireplace flush with the hearth. Will give it another 24hours to dry then get the 'place' in place, chalk around the fireback, remove it, build up from behind and at the sides with brick/broken brick and pug, get the place in place and use vermiculite to get in all the gaps before forming a nice throat down through the place to stop soot from building up!

All going really well and confident in what I'm doing, the biggest project of the house so far that I didn't have a clue before researching for hours! My father who has a successful developing business has gone through everything and confirmed it's all OK. Was quoted £350 for the fitting of it but our sweep who was adament it was a job I could do with a bit of time and patience - MSE! Pics later chaps & chapesses!

suisidevw

Right, caught up! Sounds like there are ups and downs! Keep it up guys, and for those with Christmas targets and 3 more weeks of hard word it's going to be worth it!

ukmaggie45

Hi Lisa,

lisal0u wrote: »

Latecmer & Maggie, thanks for the condolences and hugs! The funeral wasn't as bad as I thought it was going to be. My brother took his 1 year old little girl as my Gran loved her to bits and it lightened the moment! Especially when she started to clap when we were singing hymns.

Oh bless! :T I'm so glad it wasn't too awful. We had the funeral services for both my parents at their parish church, which is incredibly old, and also an Eco Church. They have a special service on the Sunday before (I think) All Hallows, and they read out the names of everyone whose funerals happened in the previous year. I wept throughout it (didn't really at the funerals as there was so much to do as I spoke along with DD1) but felt very much better afterwards.

lisal0u wrote: »

We are fitting engineered oak flooring. We had to go for engineered because of the underfloor heating. It was pretty reasonable too, £938 for 35m2. Cheaper then the carpet upstairs!! It looks lovely if I do say so myself

Been laying it today and its gone pretty well, almost finished the livingroom so just got the hallway to go!

OK, I've been wondering this for ages - what's engineered wood?

lisal0u wrote: »

Maggie - We have unoccupied insurance and there arent that many companes that will do it. In the end we went with Halifax as its who we have our mortgage with and was just easier. Its not cheap though and is costing us about £36/month!

Thanks for that. We're still a bit unsure what to do, might move in and just stay at least one night every 30 days, until we've got the work starting. And then go over to unoccupied insurance... I think we've got sufficient work needing doing that we'll be able to not pay Council Tax while the work is done, since that's around £120 a month it makes the insurance look a bargain! Assuming we could get a similar price of course.

lisal0u wrote: »

Im hoping that we will have the flooring finished tomorrow so ill take some piccys and update my blog!

Oooh, something nice to look forward to! :T :j We've got a busy day lined up today. We hope to make contact with our sols to find how much we need to raise still for the house, and hopefully we'll pick up share certs etc from them before delivering them and a couple that have arrived here to our broker. I am taking my camera, as they are on the 10th floor with stupendous views - hope they will give me permission to shoot a few pics out of their windows!

Then we'll be trying to sort out the insurance, or at least trying to decide what to do!

lisal0u wrote: »

Our Christmas moving in deadline is getting closer and weve still got lots to do! Its going to be non stop from now on!

Good luck! It will all be worth it when you're cosy in the house with your Christmas tree set up and your lovely fire flickering away...

Maggie