newhome

I imagine Mrs Jack’s vision soon turned into disappointment

My first house was a Victorian semi in Tunbridge Wells just like you describe. Before I bought it the entrance was moved to the middle of the side of the house to get round the issue of having to walk through the lounge to get to the kitchen. That’s not possible with a terrace house though. Bathroom and loo were still tacked on the back. Avocado green, nice! Victorians didn’t have inside loos in that sort of house though so a single storey bathroom off the kitchen is very common. Should have kept it! They are silly money now. My current house has a pretty large kitchen / family room that takes in one complete side of the house apart from the utility. The kitchen is at the back however but that makes sense as I never really use the front entrance if I arrive in the car as it’s quicker to walk from the garage to the rear entrance. Thus the house was designed for the plot.

2020?

Looking great! I don’t think your crane hire was too bad actually. We paid 1k in 2009 from the same company (2 day hire).

Welcome! Are you living in the renovation or elsewhere? Would be great to see some photos too.

When’s the BIL arriving to do it? Crack on, you can get tiling soon

You must have taken a photo when you fitted it surely? You've got photos of EVERYTHING

Well at least in the event of an accident you would still have 5

You in insular land up in Bidonville still, or do the horse owning incomers outnumber you now?

I guess there are just some communities that can’t accept anyone who is ‘not like them’. And by that I mean born within a few miles so ‘not from round here’. The Borders tends to be a very mixed community with many English living here, unsurprisingly given its proximity to England. I think the villages are often the worst though. Some seem to be stuck in a time warp and with most villages having little building compared to towns it encourages insularity and intolerance.

I don’t have any amazing advice I’m afraid but I do send my sympathies. I am English living in Scotland and mostly people are fine, and my neighbours in particular are great, but I did experience quite a lot of anti English sentiment around the 2014 independence vote. It was an uncomfortable place to be at times with words and actions that anywhere else would be considered to be racism. Thankfully things have calmed down now but I dread another vote as it will just fan the flames again.

Mine isn’t dissimilar to that either. There are definitely things I would change (hindsight being great!) but the basic layout seems to work. We didn’t use an architect either but the foundations were already in so we had to go with the external design and weren’t allowed to change it without submitting a brand new planning application. We played around with the internal layout a fair bit and the TF company did the BC drawings for us.

If anyone is interested in reading some less sensationalist reporting of the case there are some facts in the introduction here: http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWHC/TCC/2017/1555.html

Nope! Still a novelty! And now I don’t need the heating on as it’s warmer I am thankful that the kitchen isn’t roasting because I needed the heating on to take a shower! It’s the little things ?

I have dogs .

All plastic goes in the dishwater, dishwasher proof, top rack. Plastic to be recycled goes in too (sometimes that isn’t dishwasher proof so it dies a bit but still gets shoved in the recycling). Pots go in. No aluminium (induction). Out of interest why can’t aluminium go in the dishwasher? Bean to Cup coffee machine so no pot. Spray cleaner here too and if I want to wipe anything with a hot cloth I run the hot tap.

Me too! Everything goes in and if it dies so be it!

My next door neighbours only have 1 dishwasher but it’s in their utility room so they can shut the door when it’s on if they want to. I think I prefer mine in the main kitchen but it’s an option if you want to remove the dishwasher noise from the equation. I have to admit I barely notice the dishwasher running tbh. The beep as it ends is the only noticeably loud thing but I could disable that if I really wanted to.

They did pay an additional 3.65M for the old house and plot though. But it’s still in the right ballpark and if they got the house of their dreams it doesn’t seem too terrible TBH.

Actually I reckon collectively some of the BH crew could have built that for a lot less. You could have been in charge of the ‘procrastination’ task

Looks like we got merged lol. Yes agreed, the original plan and budget was far too ambitious but 10 years is even longer than mine took (but I didn’t overspend and nor was mine in 7 figures!). So their house is now more or less worth what it cost them to buy the plot and build so it’s not like they will be horrendously out of pocket, albeit they would have made a tidy profit had they not strayed so far over budget.

https://www.standard.co.uk/news/london/millionaire-couple-in-court-battle-with-husband-and-wife-team-over-grand-design-dream-home-that-a3861801.html

I wasn’t sure whether I would like large open plan living but I love it. I have a large kitchen / family room with large island for informal dining. I have 3 other reception rooms downstairs but I pretty much never use them. I appreciate that with a larger family you may want to use more of the rooms but they are there if I or a subsequent owner want to use them. I agree with someone further up, if you only fix one thing fix the dining room flow from the kitchen.

How come? I put everything in the dishwasher.

I guess one of the issues may be that the guarantee may be invalidated if you use any flooring with UFH if the manufacturer’s advice is not to do this.