lizzie

I’ve been in the Solihull one this morning picked up a few bits at 10% off

+1 @pocster suggestion of a visit for the grand reveal.....will Kevin Mc be available I wonder.....

I think they need to walk in my shoes to know the difference between belief and reality. I try very hard to make belief the core to overcome daily health challenges - it rarely works. I do not blindly follow science either, the placebo/Pavlov dog theory is bunkum in my case. I live every day with many debilitating health conditions. I find what works for me, without drugs wherever possible (sits looking at the 23 pills that make up the morning dose currently), what I do know is that what works for me may not work for everyone and what works for me currently can change without warning. The change in eating habits to the (modified and adapted by me) keto/paleo/lchf system has had a profound effect and I am truly inspired by the new way of eating, it has helped me enormously and I hope to be able to continue it for many years to come. I care not for the opinions of so called experts if something works positively for me I do it if it doesnt I dont. Science is little match for the vagaries of the human body which I feel science has yet to fully understand. I have left my earthly remains for organ donation/research but I think they will be of little use if the rate of progress of the last10 years is anything to go by .....they will be all worn out and past it just like me most days ....so says my bio-medical scientist niece bless her! LOL

way too soon @Onoff ?

@Mr Punter you would think if he did he would have had someone from his insurers round to look at it. He refuses to communicate emails and phone messages go unanswered, he has received them. I suspect he is operating without any insurance and spends the profit as soon as it comes in. Having checked out the ltd company at companies house the address on his guarantee is actually the address of the company formation agents and address was changed to a residential one after that. All his paperwork has the incorrect address on it. When we asked him about the address on the invoice and guarantee we were told it was his accountants address. That was a lie. The insurance backed guarantee ....hate to test that out....is on the structure of the drive not on his slapdash mess of the gates. It seems from Co House records he went bust in 2015 and started up right after under a very similar name, to Joe public hardly noticeable and not immediately apparent from his local advertising I would think. He has been around a long time as a family business just not it turns out the same company. Co Hse records show liquidators were chasing him for repayment of directors loan and they got lawyers in to him....in the end they recovered 900 out of the thousands he owed his company, hence not much to pay creditors. He seemed ok, he sent us to see previous customers to speak to them and see his work and all was positive. We went to a house in the next village and they were highly complimentary. I just think he hasnt got the money to do the rectifications and his documents are mickey mouse so not worth paper printed on. If he is broke he should have come and fessed up and made an arrangement. I think if we get a judgement against the company he will go into a voluntary liquidation having gone bust once he now knows the ropes......thats making a lot if assumptions but its the only theory holding water at the mo oh and the residential address is not registered at land registry nor is he owner of any neighbouring properties in the postcode so perhaps it is a garden annex/office at a rented house.... needs a trip to view methinks. Happy days!

he operates as a limited company, we will probably waste a court fee just for the hell of it but chances of getting any money out of it is slim. Far better use of my time is to make sure I tell everyone loudly what he has done and he never gets another job!

@jack wholeheartedly agree on eating. I have always eaten organically with meat with known provenance, gardened organically and grown what i can myself so I know its chemical free. I have been following a low carb keto/paleo type diet since acquiring T2 diabetes.....it is a huge help in controlling blood sugar and if all else was as it should be I am sure I would be bursting with good energy on this woe (way of eating). I also don’t drink alcohol and have not done so for more than 20 years (but I assure you I am not the sober bore at parties LOL). Its a good way to eat I will stay with it forever now unless some other gremlin rears its head and rules it out.

Believe me if I can find him I will probably thump him!

Been there done that dont like the result sorry

I thought I would update you all on our driveway.......the drive itself is still looking good (keeping everything crossed) however the installers caused a lot of damage to our gates (brand new powder coated aluminium gates ££££'s). The damage was not apparent for a few days as we couldn't walk on the drive. They had spilt resin on the gates (some aggrrgate stuck to it too) and then tried to get it off resulting in great smears of stone and resin all over the gates, its a real mess. Installer brought his own expert to look at it they said it couldn't be removed without damage to the powder coating the only option was gates off and taken away to be completely redone as the resin smears are spread over both sides of both gates its not just one small patch. Installer said get the quote and I will sort it out its my mistake etc etc. You know where I am heading now don't you.......quote at £995 plus vat for rectification and installer disappeared off the face of the earth. This is supposedly a well established family firm from Worcester.........next stop trading standards and local press I think, after 2 years of hell building this house and being ripped off left right and centre this is the last straw. I don't want to be slipping down the rankings for the most cowboys on one build do I!

Not estate emulsion surely LOL....that is the one bugbear I have with F&B. Love all the eggshells etc but Estate Emulsion marks as you look at it and believe me we are careful and I am very fussy in my house, I don't do marks on walls so was forever having bit redone. Couldn't get on with the wipeable Modern Emulsion just hated that slight sheen. I love your pzzazz with a F&B factory floor - Can't wait to see your interiors on the house

@curlewhouse yes think OH would have been happier with the higher banding, we have never lived in an F before LOL Me I'm happy!

@NSS please dont feel bad its the way of things with this rotten ‘condition’ (s) I’m sure you are used to the unpredictability of it all and the dreaded phrases chronic and ideopathic...... I am very pleased for Mrs NSS and hope she has many years of better health in your lovely bubble

Totally fallen for some of the new release of colours from F&B....even though I swore I would never use their very high maintenance paint again Paen Black no 294 and Sulking Room Pink no 295 are calling me very loudly.....not for the same room of course.... In the publicity photo that paen black paint is on a feature wall is set against what looks like a walnut floor and is in a very contemporary room, it gorgeous, check it out. My bedroom is screaming for that Pink.........

@Onoff thank you for that....I am a big fan of ‘alternative’ medicine and probably something of a nightmare for my conventional medics team as I always want to know the detail of everything proposed - the how and why and then I go away and research it. I like to know what is proposed for my body, I only have one!!! I will pass on this site to my least fave consultant for his review and ask him to report back to me??

Yep, very smiley...keeping fingers crossedto hear on vat refund soon, its been in 2 months now.

+1 with Mrs NSS. Am just about to start a very lengthy course of outpatient treatment for some extra allergies. Great....newly apparent debilitating allergies, now deemed chronic but only appeared since we moved into our ‘healthy,’ new build.....injections are so expensive bupa do not cover have to be done on nhs after passing the eligibility criteria (health not financial). It was always the joke I would end up living in a bubble and then eventually we decided to build my bubble as I was so increasingly unwell in our home of 30 years. ATM it looks like my healthy bubble has a leak and is not the healthy home for me we had hoped for, everyone else thinks its great, me I spend half my life drugged or at the hospital and I am far worse than I was in the previous house. BTW I too was a child of the sixties and grew up in Wales, my mother believed a bit of mud and dirt was good for kids and we were never prissy ...hard to be in house full of dogs, cats, rabbit . etc.......even the horse but that was outside so go figure on my state of health. Rest of the family are fine.

Even looking at your sampes he won’t budge? That is awful sounds a real problem character. Might be worth you investing a few hundred in a chat with a good local planning consultant see if they can help. Good luck.

hmmmmm........not in my case LOL

Got my letter today. I have been banded F which is a pleasant surprise as I was expecting G. Every little helps as they say. Not going to appeal my banding LOL

We got our roof changed from a green roof to a single ply membrane in lead look alike colour. We talked to planners and had to submit an NMA, planners had already said they would approve it. We did it via original architect as he had good relationship with local planners. We also included a change to siting of the house as original approval had the rear wall of the house hard against the earth bank of next doors garden (we had to drop down a couple of metres so house not visible on horizon above existing garden wall). I did not want a rear wall of my house having to be a tanked wall. We applied to move the house 1m away and built a massive retaining wall which gives us a back pathway and back door, this enabled our internal layout changes too. We bought with a planning in place. It was granted more than 6 months before we bought. We are not in a national park but on the edge of an outstanding area of natural beauty and in the garden of a (so far) unlisted house of special local historic interest. The original application got through with the roof and wall being major considerations into low impact for planners after a series of refusals but once they had granted a permission they agreed to to our NMA to remove both those items which were deal breakers on the plot purchase for me. They also made it clear that was the extent of the changes they would go with without a whole new application and there was no appetite for that on our side given the planning history on the site. As I recall the fees were a few hundred and similar for architects fee. I think a dialogue with the planners is very important to you and I would gather some samples and go and see them, ask for a meeting and show them side by side the two roofing materials.

Update...electrician is coming tomorrow to go through so I can label switches in the plant room..........he still maintains the switch in the corner is immersion only, we know it switches off the motorised valves....could be an interesting visit. UFH MVHR installer coming next week to go through what all the bits are in the plant room, show me how it all works and change the trap on the MVHR. Fingers crossed the plant mysteries will soon be solved.

Nice....we had a lot more than that down lost count if how many loads and we had do go down circa 1.5m over the whole site so no top soil left anywhere.......we kept topping up the hardcore must have been a foot thick by the end but the weather beat us and no matter how hard we tried mud became a fact of life through the wettest winter. Fingers crossed it remains dry and pristine, it looks lovely. Lucky you are not on clay either, vile stcky stuff.

Every day!

Thanks all. Yes doing all edges and as its hit and miss have to do the in betweens as well plus the other side. Its a lot of fence. Wretched paint has a 5 year guarantee just my luck it wont fade at all!