Nice people thread part 3- Nice as pie

Davesnave

michaels wrote: »

Went to look at this today as it is nearby and is a similar style to ours with a large extension so went to see if it would give us any ideas.

Conclusion - it is as overpriced as we thought from the details - the price they are asking is for designer interior but actually it is just OK - and who would have designed a house where the family bathroom is tiny and has no window, half the bedrooms have ssections out of them for stairs, hot water tank etc and the 'loft room' is just that - the roof still has all the trusses, purloins etc so although there is a floor and some velux there is no clear space...strange.

Hmm...it's quite a sympathetic rear extension, but I agree about the silly bathroom, and the bedrooms aren't that spacious. They'd have done better with three. I don't like toilets in cupboards or titchy utility areas either.

£650k? For a semi? :eek:

michaels

oops - got that one too.

I had to pay my builders today - no problem - hsbc website said branch open till 3pm. Went to branch and found that 'open' means you can go inside and use the cash machine or be cross sold to - bout as useful as a chocolate teapot? Halifax said cash over the counter is fine but only up to 1200 unless you have pre ordered, santander and nationwide equally helpful, ltsb only DW has an account so it would have needed both of us to nip out, barclays, no account (:eek:), Natwest only online savings account (plus an old RBS account but don't know the pin), citibank no local branches and so on. In the end rounded up 8 debit cards with 500/300 daily cash limits and emptied a couple of cashpoints - it is so annoying that citibank got rid of their 1k daily cash limit but as they don't even do faster payments in the don't get much of my banking business.

Davesnave wrote: »

If you're with the Coventry, there's none of this high tech nonsense. They send you a grid card full of numbers and ask for the one shown at various refs, like d3, or f4.

It's a bit like playing battleships.

HSBC are apparently soon going to start issuing those random number keyfob things which will be a pain in the a**e - the only saving grace of the card readers is at least they are interchangeable.

michaels

Quite - however the agent had managed to make sure that all the viewings on the 'open day' overlapped slightly to try and give it that 'buzz' of lots of interested buyers. There have been a few more 'solds' locally recently on the properties that are either priced right or been reduced by at least 15% from silly initial asking prices.

Davesnave wrote: »

Hmm...it's quite a sympathetic rear extension, but I agree about the silly bathroom, and the bedrooms aren't that spacious. They'd have done better with three. I don't like toilets in cupboards or titchy utility areas either.

£650k? For a semi? :eek:

LydiaJ

michaels wrote: »

Went to look at this today as it is nearby and is a similar style to ours with a large extension so went to see if it would give us any ideas.

Conclusion - it is as overpriced as we thought from the details - the price they are asking is for designer interior but actually it is just OK - and who would have designed a house where the family bathroom is tiny and has no window, half the bedrooms have ssections out of them for stairs, hot water tank etc and the 'loft room' is just that - the roof still has all the trusses, purloins etc so although there is a floor and some velux there is no clear space...strange.

I agree. Very odd layout with those two bathrooms. Somebody was obsessed with the idea of maintaining the symmetry and keeping the ensuite central, I think, whereas if it hadn't been quite so far over, it would still have been possible to have windows in both the master bedroom and the family bathroom, even if not very large ones. Or better still, leave the so-called bedroom 1 as it was originally built, leave the family bathroom alone, and then extend the new bedroom 4 backwards over the extension, making it the new master, and leaving space for an ensuite between the bedrooms currently labelled 4 and 3. It could have a window facing sideways because it would have obscured glass and planners wouldn't object to it. Bedroom 5 definitely wants to lose its cupboard - 6'10" x 8' is small enough without taking a chunk out of the corner.

Downstairs looks quite pleasant, although much too open plan for my taste, and while that enormous kitchen diner would be beautifully light and airy in the summer, it looks cold (or else ruinously expensive to heat) for the dark winter months with all that empty space, high ceilings and hard flooring - is it stone tiles? Not exactly cosy on a damp January evening. I prefer your proposed layout, michaels, with some openness but also a few walls and doors so you can do things separately if you want to.

I've just had another look at the plans you PM'd me ages ago, to remind myself what you're planning to do, and I wonder whether what's on the ones you sent me is really what you want to do with the doors to the bedroom and en-suite that are part of the original house rather than the extension. From the look of it, you can only get into the en-suite when the bedroom door is shut, but that's not ideal. When you live with an en-suite, you surprisingly often find yourself dashing straight through the bedroom into the en-suite to fetch something you've left there, or that lives in there - need an extra loo roll for another upstairs bathroom and can't be bothered to go downstairs, or left your watch behind, or kids decide to brush teeth in a different bathroom, and the following day they are just getting out of the bath somewhere else and you need their toothbrushes in a hurry, or something. So it's better to have the door to the bedroom and the door to the en-suite so they don't interfere with each other.

Anyway, it's just a thought. How is it all going? What stage have you got to in the process now? (Apart from visiting houses that aren't as nice as yours is going to be, of course.)

Davesnave wrote: »

If you're with the Coventry, there's none of this high tech nonsense. They send you a grid card full of numbers and ask for the one shown at various refs, like d3, or f4.

It's a bit like playing battleships.

Except not as much fun! Haven't heard of that one before. It's not as secure as the card reader thing. If you have stolen the random number grid, you can use it. Whereas with the card reader, you need the card and you need to know the pin. Some of my banks would send a confirmation code to my mobile phone, and then I had to type it in to show I'd received it.

PasturesNew

This sounds like it's the bank's way of refinancing.... invent lots of awkward ways for us to get at our money, so we give up trying

michaels

It is drawn like that mostly because that is where the existing door to the bathroom is from what is currently landing (there is also currently a separate toilet there between the bedroom that will be shrunk to make the corridor and the bathroom.

The 'cupboard' in the box room is actually over the stairs so can not come out, you would struggle to fit a single bed in to that room.

Lloyds tsb seem to ask for mobile.phone confirmation of new payees.

LydiaJ wrote: »

I've just had another look at the plans you PM'd me ages ago, to remind myself what you're planning to do, and I wonder whether what's on the ones you sent me is really what you want to do with the doors to the bedroom and en-suite that are part of the original house rather than the extension. From the look of it, you can only get into the en-suite when the bedroom door is shut, but that's not ideal. When you live with an en-suite, you surprisingly often find yourself dashing straight through the bedroom into the en-suite to fetch something you've left there, or that lives in there - need an extra loo roll for another upstairs bathroom and can't be bothered to go downstairs, or left your watch behind, or kids decide to brush teeth in a different bathroom, and the following day they are just getting out of the bath somewhere else and you need their toothbrushes in a hurry, or something. So it's better to have the door to the bedroom and the door to the en-suite so they don't interfere with each other.

Anyway, it's just a thought. How is it all going? What stage have you got to in the process now? (Apart from visiting houses that aren't as nice as yours is going to be, of course.)



Except not as much fun! Haven't heard of that one before. It's not as secure as the card reader thing. If you have stolen the random number grid, you can use it. Whereas with the card reader, you need the card and you need to know the pin. Some of my banks would send a confirmation code to my mobile phone, and then I had to type it in to show I'd received it.

vivatifosi

tomterm8 wrote: »

Kindle, one month ago, started supporting epub format. This is not popular knowledge. It is part of the overdrive deal, which is intended to make ebooks available to all US libraries.

Mmmm... is this to allow ePub format on Kindle though, or to allow Kindle proprietary onto Overdrive? The latter has the potential to kill off competition. Poss good news for libraries, but very bad for Sony et al.

PasturesNew

More "which one's ga-ga" stress...

Twice today there's been a bang - and I've gone outside to discover the side gate's not locked and blowing loose in the wind. This never happens. It's always bolted. First time, earlier, I bolted it - and both of them denied going out/using the gate. Roll on 6 hours and I've just had to go out again (this time in a downpour) as I heard a banging and was checking it wasn't ours... but it was. Unbolted again. Both denying having gone through the gate whatsoever today.

Which one's ga-ga??



One of them is!

silvercar

michaels wrote: »

HSBC are apparently soon going to start issuing those random number keyfob things which will be a pain in the a**e - the only saving grace of the card readers is at least they are interchangeable.

I didn't know the card readers were interchangeable!

I like the battleships and to use it you have to first know the password and the secret questions.

silvercar

chewmylegoff wrote: »

And also, it seems that he is suing twitter for breaching the super injunction, not the woman herself. Allegedly.

Which is why I wondered if Martin could be sued if someone put something on the forums that allegedly broke a super injunction.