lizzie

Well done!

Tiger balm......

If you are there when the 4 legged visitors come then squirt them with a plant sprayer filled with water and a good slug of gin. Try and get it on their face. They hate the gin and will clear off pdq.

Do you need one for building regs if you have mvhr? If not why bother. I have mine integrated into the hob and I love it because I hate overhead extractors and refused to have one. I use the hob one because its clean and easy but as for extracting value ... its recirculating and there is an mvhr extract not far away so probably wouldnt make a huge difference if I used it or not.

@zoothorn make sure you have legal expenses on your household policy. It covers neighbours disputes if they get to lawyers stage. I am Welsh but live in England. I was ashamed by the way some very close friends were treated when they retired to West Wales. I won't go into the detail but it ruined their retirement, made them both ill, they had 3 years of hell and ended up selling and moving back to the Midlands. 5 years on they are still bruised by it. We (Welsh) are not all the same and I am sad that you have had the misfortune to end up with neighbours like this, I know neighbours can be good or bad wherever they are but it is awful the way some of my countrymen treat English people. Its one thing to shout it out at the rugby but to carry it through to life is very wrong. People are people and should be treated with respect unless they have done something to deserve contempt.

Welcome!

We have retaining wall circa 3m high above ground and about 50m in length (part of it forms garage wall) its a big cavity wall loads of steel and concrete to SE spec. It is brick on the neighbours side and a mix of block/brick on our side. We are on clay. I think overall wall cost us in excess of 55k and we didnt muck away we put neighbouring farmers field. Anything of this nature is very expensive, you cant afford to cut corners on something as important as this. Our site was flat but we had to drop our ground levels by more than 2m to comply with planning not wanting the house to be seen on the horizon just the roof peeps over the wall.

Don't pay the VAT you won't be able to reclaim it. Give them the self certificate if they stick, its pretty worthless but in my experience does the trick as it gives them a comfort.

We ditched the original architect too. You need someone you can work with to realise your vision, someone with empathy.....and someone to gently pull you back to what is sensible and practical and able to be built without costing an arm and a leg whilst retaining your ethos.

Croeso @zoothorn I am Welsh but live in England......would like to go home one day!

Lots of us on here seem to have health issues. Is that a subconcious motivator to build perhaps? I know one of our reasons was health. If not I probably would not have left the house we built 30 years ago where I was very happy but continiously unwell as I became less able to tolerate our (beautiful) garden, river and low lying location in the bottom of the valley. I needed the top of a hill and fresh air.......god knows I didnt need the stress of the build but we are where we are with that now and the air is crisp and clear and I do like the (almost finished ) new house.

Ok I have heard back now and technically it is possible to fit blinds inside the window frame reveal of my internorm sliders. This works into the fixed pane behind the sliders less than 25mm gap......it can be done with pleated blinds, floating so they can cover any or all of the window at any point they dont have to stack at the top or bottom. The blind harware is very slim and is bonded to the glass (removable if required in the future).The bonding is done by a specialist company and comes with a 10 year guarantee. The company who can do it are part of hunter douglas group (who also own luxaflex apparently). It is thomas sanderson who tag themselves as conservatory blinds but they do a whole lot more than that. Not cheap as you might imagine but it is a workable solution. The only drawback is they have a max width of 1.4m so they couldnt do my biggest slider.

Not the right size or flexible enough for my gap, guess it all depends on what you have. Microfibre pads are better than squeegee as they clean without too much wet. The tool I found had a flexible head so I could get the angle.

Brave man that would suggest installing it that way!!

@ProDave thats exactly what we did with the freestanding bath in our last house. @Moira Niedzwiecka I had the gap between wall and bath to clean behind on hands and knees too, reaching in the narrow space the length of the bath was a challenge. Eventually I found a long handled thing designed for cleaning wall tiles (removable microfibre pads) that was just the right size to do the job. From Lakeland I think.

Even better, who would have thought the builders merchants! Looked at Sanctuary, bath looks fabulous, a real luxury bath. A few candles and a glass of bubby and you will let the cares float away. Will you have to strengthen floor for it?

Fantastic bargains. Well done you. Put a pic of the bath up, love to see what a 5k bath & tap looks like!

@ragg987 wow they are cheap! everything I looked at was £1500 plus which is why I decided it was too expensive for my small patch. If I had seen at that price would have been bought and in operation now!

I dont dare look at the utube.....I need a Wendy helper please!

We have a friend with a husquevarna, he raves about it. Hates gardening so it suits him. It likes straight lines and so does he. I have only about 350sqm of lawn so couldnt justify the price tag for the robo. I have bought a bosch cordless rechargable mower, its light as a feather, cuts well and does stripes. Whole lot cut on one charge. I am v happy at less than £300. If I had larger grass areas would def go for a robo.

Hmmmm mine is stuck up with sellotape I couldnt get it on any other way LOL

I have large soffits and down lights (23) in them running all around the front and and garden sides of the house all on pir. The ‘sides’ of the house have low level lighting on pir and I have a back door wall light. I have a wall light at the garage side door, soffit downlights at the front, uplighters in the ground along the driveway wall, 2 wall lights on the gate pillars. Security floodlight back and front too. Double external sockets on the terrace side, umpteen sockets at several points internally in the garage, an ev charging point on the garage side wall. A junction box waiting for garden lighting when landscaping done (and for power supply for potential garden studio).Gate intercom and electric gates, cctv, the list is endless!!! Still a challenge to retro route a power supply for external blinds though........oh and I have two external taps (cold water only). Cat cabled the whole house and sky tv fed to all rooms. I have a ‘data cab’ in my plant room......I never knew I was going to have one of those! Energy saving house ??

not asked those questions yet........after the previous quote I just wanted to get a starting price. I need to look at the practicalities of the power supply, it has to be mains powered and all these windows are on larch clad elevations. It could be tricky, my carpenter is still with me so we will see how we could (or could not) route a power supply without causing to many problems.

yes I know I didnt put the .8 in LOL

Back to blinds....I have had another quote supply and fit for the same windows and it is £13k inc vat, £11500 ex vat. They would zero rate on supply and fit as they are not removable. This quote is from http://www.tidmarsh.co.uk/ - attached is the spec that they have quoted on for anyone interested. Tidmarsh_440_External_Wire_Guided_Tension_System.pdf