The "have a look at this!" thread II

Davesnave

I enjoyed it. I liked the 'reflection' of the flower vase in the hallway too.

(They do say irony is the first casualty on the internet.)

zagubov

We moved into a house and my builder BIL borrowed a bulb, pressed it into the wallpaper and it glowed. Turns out they'd taken away some wall light fittings. Pretty sure that's not legal.

Mind you , amateur electricians aren't as thin on the ground as you might think. I've bought some crazily-wired houses.

moneyistooshorttomention

zagubov wrote: »

We moved into a house and my builder BIL borrowed a bulb, pressed it into the wallpaper and it glowed. Turns out they'd taken away some wall light fittings. Pretty sure that's not legal.

Mind you , amateur electricians aren't as thin on the ground as you might think. I've bought some crazily-wired houses.

Yikes!!! - and it is indeed illegal (that thing about anything that should stay put if one turns the house upside down and shakes it has to stay put in the house by law as I understand it).

Now there's a cue for anyone telling us about it that has ever heard of a vendor being prosecuted for killing/injuring the buyer of their house - if not having done it deliberately...

StumpyPumpy

zagubov wrote: »

We moved into a house and my builder BIL borrowed a bulb, pressed it into the wallpaper and it glowed.

Worst thing was: it was a daffodil bulb. :rotfl:

SP

zipbuttons

Davesnave wrote: »

Sorry, yes it's structural. Not unusual on houses of that age and type.

Probably the staircase was originally walled-in, maybe with a door at the bottom. The bannisters were likely added later when it was opened -up.

Looking at the floorplan I wonder if it was originally only one room up that staircase (about the same size as the 'master bedroom' up the other staircase) and in creating a landing to make two bedrooms (by removing a wall) some load-bearing support was needed.

Cakeguts

zipbuttons wrote: »

Looking at the floorplan I wonder if it was originally only one room up that staircase (about the same size as the 'master bedroom' up the other staircase) and in creating a landing to make two bedrooms (by removing a wall) some load-bearing support was needed.

I can't decide what it is holding up. The floorboards upstairs will go at right angles to the beams so what is holding up the ceiling between the post and the wall by the window?

Bossypants

zagubov wrote: »

Mind you , amateur electricians aren't as thin on the ground as you might think. I've bought some crazily-wired houses.

The lovely middle class couple I bought my first house from were, on completion, very pleased to be able to pass on to me, along with the keys, the contact details of 'the cheapest handyman in the county' (they had checked). Upon moving in, I found that this gentleman's idea of adding more electrical sockets in the kitchen was to staple a series of extension chords underneath the worktops and call it a day.

On the other hand, this was the same house where the master bedroom door didn't have a knob, just a rusty screw sticking out where it ought to have been (fixable by spending a fiver at B&Q), so maybe my standards are just impossibly high...

phoebe1989seb

Bossypants wrote: »

The lovely middle class couple I bought my first house from were, on completion, very pleased to be able to pass on to me, along with the keys, the contact details of 'the cheapest handyman in the county' (they had checked). Upon moving in, I found that this gentleman's idea of adding more electrical sockets in the kitchen was to staple a series of extension chords underneath the worktops and call it a day.

On the other hand, this was the same house where the master bedroom door didn't have a knob, just a rusty screw sticking out where it ought to have been (fixable by spending a fiver at B&Q), so maybe my standards are just impossibly high...

Sounds a bit like our last house, where the PO had built several of the doors and staircase panelling from old packing cases! This didn't quite gel with the Georgian country house style he appeared to have been aiming for if his recreated inglenook, pastiche oak beamed walls and original window shutters were anything to go by, lol :rotfl:

moneyistooshorttomention

Bossypants wrote: »

The lovely middle class couple I bought my first house from were, on completion, very pleased to be able to pass on to me, along with the keys, the contact details of 'the cheapest handyman in the county' (they had checked). Upon moving in, I found that this gentleman's idea of adding more electrical sockets in the kitchen was to staple a series of extension chords underneath the worktops and call it a day.

On the other hand, this was the same house where the master bedroom door didn't have a knob, just a rusty screw sticking out where it ought to have been (fixable by spending a fiver at B&Q), so maybe my standards are just impossibly high...

:rotfl:But I reckon my house trumps that - with the vendor having saved himself precisely £50 on a roof repair that needed doing. That I then had to do the second I moved in - to stop the ceiling in one of the rooms being completely ruined (the stain had spread from smallish/faded to mahoosive within weeks of moving in and I figured water would be following it within a matter of weeks...). Yep...I've got a new ceiling now (though at least my plan was to replace them throughout the house anyway....). Words failed me...:mad:

grayme-m

'What I found when I moved in' seems like it could be a thread of its own.

Our previous house had a rockery made out of concrete fence posts, an extraction fan above the cooker that just came out above the cupboards near the ceiling, wallpaper thrown on so it had folds over an inch wide coming out towards you, and in one room they had wall papered over a screw that was randomly half out of the wall.

None of which were contrary to what we paid for :rotfl: