Ferdinand

Snipped. Misread question.

Welcome to the madhouse.

Regulators making assumptions? Say it ain't so ?. F PS How does enforcement work across the border at Berwick?

I think that in law the person who supplies the rubbish which is fly tipped is responsible or co-responsible. ie your boxes - final legal disposal is your responsible. (Yes take the addreses off.) F

Welcome. Ask away...

I need to improve the ventilation of my own house (2009 chalet bingalow conversion, done to roughly 2010 regs), as it now needs to run slightly warmer for parent comfort reasons and is starting to feel a little stuffy (need to check humidity). In theory I could fit an MVHR, but it is a warm roof chalet bungalow conversion so that would be more than a little complicated, and also of course it would be a big disturbance. The plan is to try: 1 - a PIV unit upstairs - which will be on a wall on the landing not a ceiling with the unit in a space behind a stud wall in the roof angle, as nearly all the ceilings are sloping and if I get into the tiny roof voids it will be very tricky outside. 2 - Replace both upstairs and downstairs bathroom fans with (100mm) dMEV fans. 3 - If necessary trim a few mm off bathroom doors. I would welcome any comments. I am not expecting a transformation, just an improvement. I routinely fit PIVs in rented properties, and a HR fan somewhere downstairs, and all of the installations have worked well. Any comments would be most welcome. Cheers Ferdinand

If you make the plants ivy it would vanish forever in a couple of years. And so would the drive...

Starting at about £1350+VAT. Can anyone give a comparison like for like over the last 12 months?

I confess that I am still not *absolutely* clear which one you really want to change - the wall or the paving. Taking another tack, what about overhanging planting on the wall? It does rusticate it very effectively in a relatively short time. Personally I would do that and spend the 'perfectionising' money on a holiday or possibly a mistress. F

A BCO HOG? ?

+1. And I have recently had a conversation over the phone with a chap in the water company, which was helpful. This concerned their knowledge on a site which had been in the same ownership for a century and was now being split into about 5. They did not know anything so it was manholes and deductive logic. F

That's fairly extreme ... installing before the walls. A non-embarrassable workforce, and a neighbour who is a compulsory connoisseur in builders' cleavage.

Your problem there is that the sandstone is the same colour all the way through ... so it will wear back to the colour you do not like ???. Sandstone slips? (runs and hides) Could you alter the perception by repointing the mortar?

There is a product called Liquid Weather, that I know nothing about but the name. http://www.liquidweather.co.uk/liquid-weather-for-paving-paths-patios-and-driveways/ Or could you try something natural to stain it and encourage lichen etc?

Drafts = not finished ... sorry.

I did a series of blogs about things including hotel bathrooms (good places to learn about dirt traps and hopefully not phallic shadows from badly placed shower heads and lights) soon after this place started, but it stopped at 1 with an article about street furniture. There is still one in the drafts about bathrooms.

One way to sanity check that and also look for ideas is to allow yourself a few weekends away or citybreaks staying in AirBNB houses or modern holiday rentals, of which there are a lot around. It is also a lot of fun. F

Heh. Just looked him up. I meant Dr Kermode, with a PhD in Horror Fiction.

Personally I wouldn't paint them. Blowtorch to scorch? Or an external beathable dark stain? I think the stain would last better, and would darken further over time. (test first on an offcut)

Did you get caught ....?

Not a place to cut corners. Expensive if a mistake is made.

Does anybody know where the government are with progress on the National Planning Policy Framework? (This is England). I am talking to the Council, and I have just been quoted to from what I think is the Draft Version of the new NPPF. Does anyone know when this will be going active, so I can assess what I need to pay attention to for a Planning Application? I do know about our Local Plan - last month it was withdrawn AGAIN, so I think we are still on saved policies from the 2007 one or perhaps the 2002 one, and there does not yet exist an emerging Local Plan, so I think no weight can be attached to ithe new one yet. Is there any Guidance on how much weight attaches to a Withdrawn Local Plan? This app will relate to a preferred town-centre use (D2: Leisure) on an industrial estate which needs the time limit of the Use Permission extending, so it could be a bit of a shark-infested custard. Cheers Ferdinand

Something valuable that Buildhubbers may have is classic furniture from the 1950s to 1970s. I still have a Guy Rogers "Manhattan" (or similar) double-bed sofa and a pair of reclining chairs which seem to go for crazy money now (though not 20k unfortunately). At one point in the old house we had 3 sofas and 7 chairs because people buying new houses on developments kept donating them as being too big for the new house. That little lot restored could now be around 5k or more, but most went before the move to the current house. Ferdinand

That reduces it to about 20 possibles ! Including the 9 storey tower in the hospital car park in London that had a design concept like a mini Trellick Tower ?, and was arguably very cool indeed but looked like a future maintenance hostage to fortune. One assumes that if she won bigtime you would have been tied down and told about it ! F

Looking briefly at the plans (and without scaling), I wonder two things: 1 - Is that balcony too large wrt the bedroom? By shrinking it slightly can you give room to have some sort of sitting area inside your bedroom to use in the autumn / winter / spring? 2 - Do you have space to make a more sumptuous bathroom without undermining the dressing or bedroom? 3 - The living room seems rather cut off from the kitchen, and the kitchen does not seem to have a place to sit comfortably rather than at the table. Do you want 2 'reception' spaces for when you have visitors, grandchildren in etc. So that you could divide TV / talk or noisy / civilised etc. All of those depend on how you will live in it. F