First-time house renovation

deonsnider

Usually, grease traps look like boxes or barrels, which are connected to the sewage system. It is located somewhere before the point where the drain pipes meets the common sewage system and is not connected to any other drainage, like those from toilets. Only wastewater containing grease, flow through these grease traps.

aliasojo

ukmaggie45 wrote: »

What's up with the sinking floors? That sounds quite worrying. Wooden or solid?

Old narrow wooden floorboards. We kinda know now, where to walk round iyswim. Some bits just sag, I suspect the joists underneath are dodgy, other bits have been cut out and relaid very badly. I had to put a shelving unit outside the bathroom for our towels as the airing cupboard has an 'interesting' floor that would probably have you downstairs quicker than expected if you went in there to get a towel. :rotfl:

It's church owned and I know churches never tend to have much money, but their 'asset' is depreciating rapidly simply because it's not looked after or properly repaired. It tends to be the oldies in the congregation who deal with stuff here and to be quite frank, it's just not their forte. Apologies if that sounds harsh.

We originally expected just to be renting here for the initial 6 months but we've been quite shocked at how expensive this area is, so it's looking like we may end up here longer than we'd thought.

I just keep buying wine, eating chocolate and envying all of you.

TM, thoughts with you. x

latecomer

deonsnider wrote:

Usually, grease traps look like boxes or barrels, which are connected to the sewage system. It is located somewhere before the point where the drain pipes meets the common sewage system and is not connected to any other drainage, like those from toilets. Only wastewater containing grease, flow through these grease traps.

:huh: - wrong thread?


We've had 2 lots of joiners in today one finishing off the kitchen and the other fitting the new handrail to the stairs and some glazers to fit the new back door.

Teh ones in the kitchen are as bad as before and had to be directed by OH to fit the upstands flush to the wall as they were sitting out. He blamed the wall not being flat and said we would need to use decorators caulk to fill in. So OH pushed the upstand back and it sat nice flush and asked him to explain what the problem was. Seemed the main problem was he's cut one length slightly short and made up for it by leaving the other piece slightly off the wall. OH made him sort it so its looks pretty good but I'm fuming as I dont think thats acceptable but will have a look before speaking to the kitchen company. Certainly wont be paying the rest of the bill (only 5% IIRC) and if I dont like it I'll be telling them to do it again. Sick of this sort of carry on.

Other joiners have done a good job and OH has asked them to fit the new laminate in the kitchen which they are going to do for £100 cash which isn't bad for aprox 6m2. Apparently hand rail looks good despite it being a fraction short for the long length so they reduced the angle a touch to make it long enough - should have ordered a longer length

Builders outside are finished and it looks great -and all this rain has been great for watering the new turf. Will get some pics up when I get a chance to take some. Trying not to think about how much we are spending.

going to try and decide on carpets today so we can get them ordered.

Seen a new house which I like - only £150k over budget presuming we get a good price for ours :eek:

Mind you it doesn't need any work done at all

aliasojo

latecomer wrote: »

Seen a new house which I like - only £150k over budget presuming we get a good price for ours :eek:

Only?!

I'm clearly the poor relation on this thread. :rotfl:

latecomer

aliasojo wrote: »

We originally expected just to be renting here for the initial 6 months but we've been quite shocked at how expensive this area is, so it's looking like we may end up here longer than we'd thought.

Are you keeping your house or planing on selling up and buying again? I'm sure you've probably mentioned this before but I've got the memory like a sieve

latecomer

Its all a bit of a game at the moment - we cant buy anything until we sell ours or not without crippling ourselves so I've got a wide ranging search setup in our destination area more just to track whats happening than anything else.

I guess if we cant sell then we can look at renting it out and buying somewhere but I'm not that keen on the idea. One large mortgage is enough for me

latecomer

Forgot to add - we do have one new problem - when the skip was removed it caught the kerb and has ripped up the kerb stone and damaged the pavement. OH has spoken to builder who was going to speak to skip company - haven't heard anything back.

OH also phoned the council about getting a council tax rebate for the time the house has been unoccupied and unfurnished - apparently we should be able to claim back up to six months which would be a result. they need to do an inspection which we are trying to arrange but waiting on the council getting back to us. If we can claim that back it would pay for the new back door :j

aliasojo

latecomer wrote: »

Are you keeping your house or planing on selling up and buying again? I'm sure you've probably mentioned this before but I've got the memory like a sieve

Ideally we would prefer to keep the house in the Highlands (only a small mortgage on that one) and also buy in the central belt area but we just didn't appreciate the type of prices in the specific area we are looking in so it may not be as 'do-able' as we first thought.

We are tied to this area due to daughter's school, she had a hard time adjusting from the Highlands to here so we wont be moving her school again, we're in this area no matter what now.

We may have to reconsider and sell up after all but as it's only early days here, I still tend to class our own house as a safety net and it worries me to do away with that.

It's an ongoing thought process at the moment.

latecomer

I know of a lovely, very reasonably priced house in the central belt which is coming on the market soon

Where are you looking?

We are toying with the idea of buying something smaller (and hence cheaper) with future potential and looking to invest in a holiday home up north .

aliasojo

Will pm you.