newhome

Sounds like you need a way of keeping the draught out of the kitchen from that entrance porch / utility. What do you have planned for that? Internal door to separate the rooms or something?

PB next! Chop chop! Looking good though.

Again! ? You’ve used that excuse already recently! MTFU! Is the phrase used at work!

What sort of insulation do you have in the loft above the kitchen? No wonder it's cold if you have hardly any insulation on 3 walls, the roof and the floor! At least 1 and a half walls will be insulated when you get this done.

I would be sprinkling poison in every available crack that you find in the cavity. Bloody things need to go PDQ! I realise that in older houses it's sometimes a losing battle but hopefully there will be a way of getting the problem under control. They even sell an odour killer so it's a pretty common issue - dead Mickey disguiser

Doesn't it tend to be the planners who decide whether the scale is 'out of keeping'? Might be worth having a look through the planning portal to see if you can find evidence of other houses in the local area being refused due to size. My house here is pretty large compared to the small listed cottage next door, but about half the size of next door but 1 (that is huge and at least 400 yards up the road).

Once the space is sealed and they die in there unfortunately I doubt there is much you can do about it other than wait for the smell to go which it will in time. Better putting up with that for a bit than having mice running riot all round the kitchen.

Yes I think most things have an element of risk of various types. To mitigate against a financial risk of paying for something upfront pay by credit card. If ever there was really good reason to pay by credit card it is for the cover it provides when a supplier doesn't deliver / goes into liquidation. Even if you pay say £100 deposit on a card and the rest in cash you are covered for the whole purchase under Section 75 of the Consumer Credit Act. Alternatively you could maybe buy high value but smaller items that you are able to store somewhere for the time being.

Most people will say try not to beat the market when investing. That said if you know that you can afford the goods you need now I would possibly buy what you can now, and look to hedge your bets for later by buying some Euros possibly, but not all. You will lose out if you buy and sell them though so you'd need to consider whether it may be worth it or not. No high street bank will want to give you advice on that.

Lol. I prefer to rely on fact and detail if I can rather than mostly anecdotal over the garden fence info lol. Sometimes it's the only way though. I hope Google will help highlight what you need unless someone here has another suggestion.

Have any of the neighbours with similar sized houses ever applied for PP in recent years? If so you may find plans of their respective houses on the planning portal.

That’s better news. They must have caught your mood and valued their balls enough not to pee you off further lol ?.

Well now you come to mention it the ST doesn't work ...

Nope, I only drank wine in the pub - you had the bottle of white on your own on the Sunday night having made a miraculous recovery from the Sunday morning hangover. I was still dying by then ..,..

??? I don’t recall the question ‘shall I get more beer on the way home’ being greeted with ‘no we’re fine with the one can’. And anyway you downed a bottle of vino too I seem to remember ...

Deep breath when you get to that bit. Don't do as before and go psycho with the first bit and have it turn into a crumbling mass of dead PB. If something starts to go even slightly wrong, stop and rethink it, take a picture and post here. Get those batteries charged!!

Are they in the loft? Worth putting some traps up there in case with their favourite hole no more they shimmy up the cavity and exit roof bound.

Lucky for you they were here before you lot turned my house into a lads’ drinking den! ?

Yeah but it’s nearly done now! What’s next? The reveal?

I’d put some Mickey death traps (poison) behind those cupboards before I put them back, just to be sure.

And the verdict .... Got one of the marks out, a line on the splashback behind the hob so something cooking related I imagine that wouldn't shift with normal cleaner. It didn't touch the 3 ring marks on the worktop though unfortunately. As I'm not clear what actually caused them I don't really know how to prevent them TBH but guess I will just have to be careful to not leave anything sitting on the worktop that might cause a ring to form. Having said that, the hubby managed to do something similar to the laminate worktop in the utility room (God knows what with) so laminate can mark too.

They look great. The greatest satisfaction comes from completing something that is difficult not the easy things in life. I hope you made it up to Faye! Deffo some TLC needed there!

Thanks. I will try acetone. Do I need to leave it on there or just wipe it? You forgot nail polish ?? in the list ?. Will have to wear gloves lol.

The max RHI I would get would be 9.1k over 7 years. If I could get the install at around 9k I might go for it even if that’s still considered to be quite a lot for the installation, but I’m not paying 14.5. That quote wouldn’t work with my current heating tariff anyway. I imagine some of the companies are larger and have more overheads but even so it’s too expensive in my view. Someone mentioned a scheme when companies installed ‘free’ ASHPs in return for handing over the RHI payments. Not sure that’s something I want to consider however and I haven’t yet read the small print.

It’s all a rip off here which is what I told the lady from the Energy Saving Trust when she came to visit. She herself said that numerous people had told them that they couldn’t get installations for ASHPs from suppliers in Scotland and they were suggesting contacting installers in England. She said that in her experience installs started at 9–10k for the smallest ASHPs so she wasn’t surprised to see that mine was 14.5k. At that price it ain’t gonna happen! If anyone wants a career change there’s one right here to consider!