AliG

A second for raise the bed up not drawers below it. For people who don't want to unpack they can just slide their cases under the bed with clothes inside. For people who do unpack there will be enough space elsewhere and cases will take up a lot of space in a not very large room if there is nowhere to put them. Although I don't run a B&B my wife is American and we have had dozens of people stay over the years so it sometimes feels like one. They think it is incredibly cold here and will be loaded down with coats. A few times in our house the have hung wet coats or indeed towels on radiator. The combination of a hot radiator and wet coat has led to damaging the plasterboard in the walls. Indeed I have seen a wall rippled in line with the fins on the back of the radiator. So somewhere to hang up wet stuff is probably a must as well as maybe a heated towel rail in the bathroom. The other thing I find with many foreign visitors is they don't know how stuff works and for years I have been threatening to write up an operations manual for them. Of course people don't read stuff, but something next to the heating, washing machine etc to explain how it works will be useful and hopefully stop people breaking things. People's ability to break things through ignorance is extraordinary. Americans are not always used to front loading washing machine and heating systems are often designed differently in other countries for example. For some reason they also find multi-point door locks very confusing. I would try and buy cheap solid wood furniture. It is more expensive than mdf stuff but if the melamine coating is damaged it is basically ruined whereas wood can usually be sanded and fixed. It is also harder to begin with. Also think about sealing the tops of any cabinets against water damage. If I had chairs/sofas I would go leather/fake leather for ease of cleaning too or loose covers that can be replaced.

I spent considerable time looking on various solar forums. I thought, considering we use a lot of hot water that solar thermal would be a good idea. However, most people seemed to agree that solar thermal had many issues and that PV was the way to go. As well as maintenance issues solar thermal tends to generate way more hot water than people need when it is sunny and then very little when it is not. Depending on the design of your system, it is difficult to store excess hot water generation. It is more likely that your house always needs at least some electricity and excess electricity can be directed to heat hot water, thus PV is more flexible. It depends to some extent on what heat sources you have available. If you have mains gas available to heat water then this tends to be the cheapest way to do it due to electricity being so much more expensive than gas. However if you use oil then the calculations may start to change. It seems like you plan to use an ASHP. From my recollection, this has similar costs to using mains gas, although higher capital costs than a gas boiler. However if you do use an ASHP then powering it from PV when possible would considerably cut costs to run it. One of the issues though with an ASHP it runs less efficiently when it is cold which is when you are most likely to use it. Also they are less efficient heating water to high temperatures.

That's exactly where there is a small hole in my one. I am not sure if the hole there is unavoidable. If the hinge is to work surely there will always be a small gap between the seal and the chrome piece? I will take pics when I get to London.

I have this kind of screen where I stay in London. It is a rented flat. Water was getting into this gap causing the wall to get damp and eventually the plasterboard needed to be replaced. The plumber replaced the screen and shower at the same time. Leaking continued, I will now check to see if I have the same issue as Nick is pointing out here. What I spotted is there is a small hole at the bottom between the rubber seal and the hinge. The plumber had fitted the cheapest shower head he could find, I looked it up, £3.99. The head was very small and so the water came out at a steep angle to cover a larger area. This resulted in such a large amount of water hitting the screen that some inevitably squeezed through the small hole. I didn't bother complaining to the landlord, I just went and bought a new shower head that directs most of the water into the bath. This has helped somewhat but I still find this kind of screen a pain. If you knock it as you get in and it isn't properly aligned then water gets under it, it also gets past the end and onto the floor. @Nickfromwales makes a great point re instructions. He helped me out with my new bathroom being badly fitted and it was basically down to the plumber not reading the instructions. Indeed each time he came back I printed them out for my wife to give to him and she said he just ignored them. Eventually the bathroom fitter sent a female plumber. My wife said she spent some time reading the instructions before starting and she got it all sorted out. I am a big believer that you can do anything with a clear set of instructions (within reason).

I think as long as the agreement is reasonable I would sign it. It is unlikely they want to do anything other than cover their backs. I understand what you are saying as to signing away your rights if an accident happens due to their negligence and not something you or your builders do. However, if I was in their position I might argue that if you weren't there it wouldn't have happened and they wouldn't have to worry about it. So much as you might consider it their fault, they might consider it your fault for being there and without being indemnified from the risk they could argue they would rather you weren't there.

Haha. I was wondering how I came up in this forum. 21275 cans according to the measurement shown in the pic! I just paid for the tiles today, Foster's cans may have been cheaper!

All working fine for me on Safari @ProDave Good excuse to read your blog.

Edit - @Vijay beat me to it Costco sell nice looking garage flooring in rolls sometimes. I took this pic off their US website as they only sell it in store here https://www.costco.com/NewAge-8'-x-20'-Versaroll-Garage-Flooring.product.100300491.html I don't know if they have it currently, but I found it on Amazon, I think it might be a bit cheaper at Costco. https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/offer-listing/B00TPQL94Q/ref=dp_olp_new?ie=UTF8&condition=new

I knocked down a house to build my new house and we certainly had to notify BC for that. From what I can see you will need a warrant, although you could contact the council and ask as I don't know at what point that something is a small enough demolition to be exempt.

THat's what I was thinking. I just asked the contractor on the new place and he says he should be able to get a guy to do it. It's been a real pain, I am not sure of the protocol, but basically every time I have had work done on the house it has all been finished as far as I can see but then they don't apply for the completion certificate and then when the council come to inspect I find some very minor thing hasn't been done and it is a real hassle to get small jobs done and get the certificate.

As my build progresses my house is about to go up for sale. I had an extension built a few years ago, but the builder never applied for the completion certificate. The council came round and I need the electrical sign off (Scottish scheme) The electrician moved abroad, indeed the builder has also moved to America now, and the builder just could not get the certificate out of him. Should I be OK just finding another electrician to inspect the work and sign it off? I was thinking of just putting it up on ratedpeople

I am not tax expert, this is just from my reading of the rules. Assuming that you go to a lawyer for the transfer they will likely give you better advice. 1. Assuming that your dad's garden has been in continuous use as his garden, the house is his primary residence and his house sits on less than 0.5 hectares then the garden transfer would be exempt from CGT. 2. If you move into the house and it becomes your main property then it will become exempt from CGT. However, there is no hard and fast rule about how long you would have to live there for. This seems to be somewhat of a grey area. If you owned another house and moved out then back in for example it is unlikely it would be considered that it was really your main residence. 3. If land is transferred to you then back it is unlikely there will be any tax due as the value would be the same or indeed less, if it is now definite that it cannot get planning permission. To qualify for principle residence CGT relief the garden would have to be brought back into use as part of the house's garden. 4. I didn't know this, but as far as I can see if property is transferred as a gift and there is no mortgage on the property then there is no stamp duty payable. If it is a gift the value is 0 so if it was developed and sold there would be more CGT to pay. Indeed if the plan was to develop and sell it I would guess that you would be better off buying it from your dad as this would reduce CGT liability. 5. If a valuation was necessary in any situation then it would just have to be reasonable and justifiable, it would not have to be a professional surveyor. The onus is on the buyer to register the correct market value if necessary. 6. Normally the solicitor files any necessary stamp duty, although they should confirm it isn't necessary if it is a gift. 7. Morbid, but If your dad was to die within 7 years of the transfer it might be necessary to go back and value the "gift" My reading is that if you plan to live in the house as your main residence then the land can be transferred as a gift and all should be fine. If you plan to develop it and sell it, it would probably be better to either sell you the land or indeed just sell the land to a developer.

There are various nice oak and walnut doors available at reasonable prices, £150ish a door. I also found Todd Doors doing solid oak doors for less than £100 which is a great price. I plan to use JB Kind Mistral Walnut, Oak is also available. LPD Vancouver are similar. LPD Porto is a nice door but the smallest width is 610mm. I think these hardwood flush with maybe some grooves or shaker style doors represent the best value for money. One thing I found when choosing doors was it was hard to find ranges available in all the sizes I need, I am using metric sizes as they are taller, but they seem harder to get. This place gets good reviews and has some incredibly reasonably price solid oak doors, but I haven't seen them. https://www.todd-doors.co.uk/internal-oak-doors#/pageSize=30&viewMode=grid&orderBy=10&pageNumber=1 I have very nice oak look doors at the moment, but they are two panel with raised mouldings and they have more parts so are more prone to issues with delaminating, loose mouldings etc. They also gather more dust. A 2x610 bedroom door would look nice, but how would you work it, if you keep 1 door locked in place, 610mm is an uncomfortably narrow door to use in my opinion.

Ah so it is due to lack of ventilation in the windows. They may have been added to the living room windows due to the fire. Assuming you aren't planning to replace the windows with new ones with trickle vents, which means you could block up the wall vents, I found another discussion about the same issue. You can get cowled vents that reduce noise and draughts through the air bricks. I suspect that these would be a good idea. You could unblock the vents and then put proper vents into them. http://www.airflow-vent.co.uk/product-category/plumbing-ventilation/plumbing-ventilation-through-wall-vents/ 2000ppm of CO2 is stuffy, although I have never tested what my bedroom gets up to. The easiest solution rather than opening your bedroom to the outside is to open the bedroom door and allow air to circulate around the house. Interesting to see what this guy found here. http://vair-monitor.com/2016/09/29/sleeping-closed-room-indoor-co2-analyze/

@Simplysimon I can totally see it in your 50 year old house, but not 20. I see you're in Scotland like me, indeed almost everything up here built in the last 30 years is timber frame, but due to issues in the 70s with timber frame houses they fell out of popularity in England. I don't know about Ireland where Mike seems to be. I was thinking the same thing, that a block built house probably has enough draughts that vents aren't needed although building control wouldn't agree. My parents had a Wimpey timber frame house built in the mid 80s and I remember it was a bit prone to condensation. It was single glazed and I don't think it had trickle vents, but my memory is a bit vague. Their subsequent house built in around 1992 had both.

Is the house definitely only 20 years old? It seems very odd to have this kind of air brick in such a modern house. The bubble wrap was probably put there by a previous owner trying to stop draughts. Is the cavity sealed all the way round the air bricks, I can see the bricks at the sides, but not the top and bottom? Most air bricks are to ventilate under wooden floors or to ventilate cavities, but these seem to be for room ventilation. If so did the rooms originally have gas or coal fires?They may have been to provide ventilation for the fires. As Simon said they may also have been instead of trickle vents in the windows, but that would seem odd in a 20 year old house. If they are instead of trickle vents they are likely larger than needed by building regs for ventilation. If windows have trickle vents and there are no fires I am at a loss as to why they are there. I doubt you have to worry about having too little ventilation, assuming you don't have any damp issues. I would be more worried about the heat loss. I would be considering having them closed up but only after ascertaining why they were there and if you have enough ventilation from other sources such as trickle vents.

Thanks Alex. I have Rationel windows, but they don't offer a big selection of doors so I am looking elsewhere. I am still torn between a black door as my windows are black granite alu clad and a wooden door. I got a quote for a Hormann front door which was very nice but surprisingly expensive so I started looking at RK who have more options and better security but are probably a little more again. The Gaulhofer ones look nice, it seems like they have insulated wooden front doors which I have struggled to find. You can get them but I want the combo of good insulation, good looks and high security levels. I am struggling a bit as their door brochures appear to only be in German. Would you say prices look similar to the RK Doors?

I have been planning to use this company for my front door. RK Doorsystems. They are very nice but pricey. I have been watching to see if they have a sale on and noticed they had a lot of ex display doors with a bit of a discount. The prices also include delivery which was quite expensive on the quote they gave me. Might be of use to someone. Sadly none of them are exactly what I was after, although the black glass one is close. http://www.rkdoorsystems.co.uk/special-offers-on-front-doors.html I don't think there is an issue with me posting this from their website, I couldn't find anything in the rules against it.

Our house is full of plastic storage boxes. I found ones on Amazon that come with files and now use them to keep all my filling in rather than a filing drawer. Much easier to move around and stack them up. My spaces are narrower but taller, so less crawling and more squeezing. The bedroom walls rise to 2.2m high before the roof encroaches so the space will be around 2.1m high dropping to 1m at the outside wall. I will need to check to see if they are running the floor screed to the outside wall or just inside the stud walls as that will slightly impact on the space. Off to show it to the wife see what she thinks. Will need to consider where to put doors so that they don't look odd.

Checked the plans and it is actually 1m from the back of the studs to the block work so should be a usable space. Might put the PV inverter up in there also.

Very good point @JSHarris. It is a lot easier to access than a loft and I have basically eliminated the loft above these rooms to save on insulation and as it didn't look as the space would be useful. What I said was lets see how the space looks when the studs go up for the interior walls and how usable it is. If it looks like a space that we can readily get into and use then we we will keep access to it. I had been thinking about putting lots of doors in which I didn't fancy, but if there is space where you can put in one door then move along inside the space then I think you are right and I should keep access to it.

Busy week as I have been off for Easter. Long meeting with builder and architect. It was the first time I had stood on the first and second floors. One of the most interesting things was seeing the sarking boards go on the roof. These are 22mm timber laid with a 2mm gap to allow the roof to breath. I had never seen the traditional kind of boards, I assumed it was going to be large OSB boards not long timber lengths. The roof looks very robust relative to what I am used to seeing on most modern houses. Hopefully this will eliminate creaks as well as chattering tiles etc. It gets pretty windy up here, especially as we are 130m above sea level. If you look at the picture below, there will be around 900mm between the insulated plasterboard and the exterior wall. I wanted to keep the walls above head height before the roof encroached on the rooms. The architect asked if I wanted to use it as storage. I don't think I need the space, but we are hoping to create a little secret room for my daughter off her bedroom. They were still putting in the loose rafters on the other side of the room. The joiner's saw was not enjoying it one bit as he tried to cut the width slightly on what looked like a 5m long timber. I couldn't understand why it hadn't been ordered cut to width. Originally the architect specified 200mm Celotex insulation in the roof, insulating it right to the peak so we can use the space above the bedrooms. There is then insulated plasterboard below the trusses to reduce cold bridging. As you can see there isn't that much space and the trusses cut into it. I suggested that where the roof is flat why no just change to 400m of mineral wool which provides the same U-Value as 200mm of Celotex at a fraction of the cost. We are still looking in to getting Kanuf Omnifit Stud instead of Celotex on the sloped areas of roof. This is roughly two thirds the cost for a modestly worse U-Value. Omnifit Stud has a lambda of 0.034 vs 0.04 for normal earth wool, but for some reason seems almost impossible to buy. The stone has started to arrive to go around the windows. I love the variation in the sandstone. There were two pieces chipped on the front face which should be getting replaced. The individual pieces look incredibly heavy, I am glad I don't have to move them into place. View North from my daughter's bedroom window. View across the upstairs landing, they have filled the double height space with scaffolding so they can put in the windows. View from the top floor. Looking down onto the master bedroom. You won't be able to look down here once the walls are built. The master bedroom is double height. View down into study. We had to add an unexpected wall here to support the steel members for the roof. This made the room smaller but we are going to build alcoves with a library effect. Perhaps the one room in the house where we had unexpected changes that had a major effect. Important decision of the day. Roof tile colour. These are both supposed to be red, but the one on the right looked more like terracotta so we went with the darker one which we think will be less in your face over a larger area. Decision was made without the input of SWMBO but she thankfully agreed.

Work is racing along now. Big job now is putting current house up for sale, so need to finish all the little jobs I have been putting off. The end wall of our bedroom has to go up here before they can put the steel in for the main roof. There will be a chimney on this end of the house around 13m high. I'm a bit scared for it in high winds! Roof trusses going up along one side of the house, then we can get the parking on to get it water tight.

I was against vinyl/Lino from experiences of it in my parents' house as a child. However recently I spent some time looking in to it and it's all in the fitting. Vinyl floor that is stuck down correctly so that it doesn't wrinkle can create a very nice finish. In a bathroom you can fit it slightly up on to the wall to get a clean and waterproof fit. Do you really think you'll need to be able to take it up to get into the floor? It can be secured with double sided tape which should allow this unlike tiles or Amtico type flooring. My brother has supposedly waterproof click laminate in his kitchen and bathroom. It looks awful after a few years although he is probably pretty hard on it. The big advantage of vinyl is no joins for water to get into which could damage the subfloor and no grout which is harder to clean. You can also get some pretty snazzy modern effects.

After seeing what some people ask for I have become more insistent when the retailer is clearly in the wrong. There was a period a few years ago where every time I bought ice cream in Sainsbury's it had been defrosted then refrozen which ruins it. This also meant that they were likely breaking the law and leaving thrice cream out of the freezer too long whilst stocking it or allowing their freezers to get too warm. Anyway after having a few tubs of Ben and Jerry's ruined the next time it happened I drove straight back and asked them to pay for my fuel as well. I don't think this is an unreasonable request when the retailer has clearly done something wrong such as sell you the wrong or a broken item. But many retailers have seriously cut back on their generosity due to people abusing it such as brining back items they have changed their mind about after months or indeed items that they have used. It is hard to strike a balance. On average retailers still try to wriggle out of their responsibilities under the sale of goods act. I think they rely on the fact that people haven't got the time to sue them in small claims court. I did complain to trading standards a while back after being overcharged in Tesco and a staff member lying to my face that they couldn't fix it and refund the difference.