The nervous wait to exchange....

  • Thread starter Thread starter noj
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pingwing said:
Congrats and welcome to the never ending life of trying to sort a house that's not been touched in 40 years!
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Haha! Pingwing! How you doing? It's been ages.

The moving out and in, getting settled and then getting work started is going to be that much more fun than expected... seeing as I popped my ACL playing football tonight. I'm pretty sure I still won the 50:50... but at 35 years old that's the end of my football career.

Wife not impressed.
 
toshj said:
Haha! Pingwing! How you doing? It's been ages.

The moving out and in, getting settled and then getting work started is going to be that much more fun than expected... seeing as I popped my ACL playing football tonight. I'm pretty sure I still won the 50:50... but at 35 years old that's the end of my football career.

Wife not impressed.
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Yeah it's been ages! I'm good, 5 months into a renovation project of my own and realised trying to keep on top/motivated and in budget to be slightly tougher than expected. Should really get the worrying number of pictures posted as it's been quite the experience

Other than the terrible football injury are you all well? This house malarky hopefully will be all fun and games
 
Semple said:
Ooof that's pretty poor from the solicitor firm! Certainly one i'd be making a complaint to them about. Normally with deposit fees we're talking a good 5 figure amount, so something that would stress anyone about if it suddenly went missing.

We picked our keys up on the 13th Sep, thankfully we still had the flat for 3ish weeks, so can take our time with the move.

Despite being a newish house (2012), it would appear the previous owners hadn't decorated in the 7 years that they were there. So last week i've ended up having to strip off some wallpaper, repair some walls, and pull up the carpets. Got furniture turning up at different times over the next few weeks as well. God knows how people manage to do a move out and move in, all within a single day!
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I'm 5 weeks into a renovation on a very similarly aged property, with a very similar scenario (not decorated in all this time). Previous owners also had quite bad taste in my opinion, stupid colours and feature walls everywhere.

I've stripped all of the wallpaper back, filled holes, painted, new carpets etc same as you.

Unfortunately had to move out and in one the same day, makes the fixing up much harder as I have to work around furniture and living space.

How is yours going? What is your overall budget? I am looking at a total spend of approx £25K.

My carpet suppliers made a mistake and put down 40oz carpet instead of 50oz which I paid for, instead of getting them to change it they gave me the 40oz one at a good discount.
 
Messed up with my remortgage.. :rolleyes: well not really, but..

For some reason my 2 year fix deal, which started on 6 October 2017, actually ends on 31 December 2019. Halifax waive the early repayment charge if you switch to a new deal with them up to 3 months before but their rate doesn't come close to what I've got with Nationwide so I guess I'll just have to wait until the new year. Was pulling a bit of cash out so good job I hadn't spent it already!
 
pingwing said:
Yeah it's been ages! I'm good, 5 months into a renovation project of my own and realised trying to keep on top/motivated and in budget to be slightly tougher than expected. Should really get the worrying number of pictures posted as it's been quite the experience

Other than the terrible football injury are you all well? This house malarky hopefully will be all fun and games
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Sounds like you're five months ahead of us. We've got for floors of renovations, but with nasty stuff like asbestos and frustrating stuff like lathe and plaster work to do... with a 6 month old crawling around in the background. Suffice to say, the house and garden aren't exactly child friendly at the moment.

Trying to get all this done whilst running an ever-expanding, ever-frustrating business is starting to take it's toll. I've lost the ability to communicate properly with those around me. Fun fun.

How's non-house life going? You get to see that rabble on the south coast play much?
 
Given neither I nor the seller are in a chain it all seems to be going rather slower than I had anticipated. Offer was accepted on the 13th August, currently in the midst of solicitors talking to each other, but the sellers solicitor seem very slow at responding.

First 17 queries were sent to them on the 9th Sept, 4 more on the 16th and another 2 more on the 18th. They replied to most (not all) of the first 17 queries on the 24th with very short answers.

There were lots of queries around missing evidence of permission for restrictive covenants for the conservatory and extension, no building control certificates, no electrical certificates, no certificates for the boiler. Most worrying is the land registry plan seems to show a path down the side of the property, which is no longer there due to the extension and an arched brick gate down the side of the house. Waiting to see what comes of that!
 
We exchanged yesterday!

Few things came up on the survey but a lot of it was the usual BS that's just covering themselves so away we go. Let the project house begin :D

We complete on the 24th Oct :)
 
toshj said:
Congrats! What work have you got planned for the place?
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Everything pretty much....

We're first time buyers and had the choice of getting a small and finished house or bigger but a project - We went for the project option, which we may regret :D

It's a 4 bed extended semi, all good size rooms, basic loft conversion that could be used as a 5th room/study. It's got a rubbish pool in the garden with more grass in it than water which we will rip out, 100ft garden which is an absolute state, a weird second bathroom thing built within a large kitchen, need to knock that down a fit a big kitchen in, current one is disgusting, the extension is basic, conservatory is basic, will likely replace both of those.

The guy smoked a huge amount too, all walls, carpets, you name it is stained yellow with tobacco marks - Lovely :D
 
toshj said:
Sounds like you're five months ahead of us. We've got for floors of renovations, but with nasty stuff like asbestos and frustrating stuff like lathe and plaster work to do... with a 6 month old crawling around in the background. Suffice to say, the house and garden aren't exactly child friendly at the moment.

Trying to get all this done whilst running an ever-expanding, ever-frustrating business is starting to take it's toll. I've lost the ability to communicate properly with those around me. Fun fun.

How's non-house life going? You get to see that rabble on the south coast play much?
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Congratulations on the little one as well! That's going to be juggling act to start with but you'll get into the swing of things, I bet you've already got some kind of plan?

Non-house life is good, hard work delivering HS2 modifications in the rail infrastructure and traveling as much as reasonably possible with mates before they all hit the marriage/baby craze (which I'm miles from). Had to give up my season ticket last season (Mark Hughes killed football for me) which is the biggest change as I hardly go, this season I've only been to Forest green away in the leasing.com trophy... Had much of a chance to see Brentford?
 
HungryHippos said:
I'm 5 weeks into a renovation on a very similarly aged property, with a very similar scenario (not decorated in all this time). Previous owners also had quite bad taste in my opinion, stupid colours and feature walls everywhere.

I've stripped all of the wallpaper back, filled holes, painted, new carpets etc same as you.

Unfortunately had to move out and in one the same day, makes the fixing up much harder as I have to work around furniture and living space.

How is yours going? What is your overall budget? I am looking at a total spend of approx £25K.

My carpet suppliers made a mistake and put down 40oz carpet instead of 50oz which I paid for, instead of getting them to change it they gave me the 40oz one at a good discount.
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Wow that's quite a bit of a renovation budget! Thankfully most of ours is only cosmetic changes, so including some new furniture which we had to buy as we've come from a furnished flat, i don't think we'll spend much more than 5k.

We would like to change the kitchen and en-suite bathroom in a couple of years, so that'll be a good 10-15k cost. But happy to keep things as they are for now.
 
Semple said:
Wow that's quite a bit of a renovation budget! Thankfully most of ours is only cosmetic changes, so including some new furniture which we had to buy as we've come from a furnished flat, i don't think we'll spend much more than 5k.

We would like to change the kitchen and en-suite bathroom in a couple of years, so that'll be a good 10-15k cost. But happy to keep things as they are for now.
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I've uploaded some pics of how it was before: https://imgur.com/a/SElY1FL

I am going to wait another couple of months to upload the after pics, because stuff is still pending like the bathrooms/kitchen etc.

The before pics make it look better than it was in reality, had to do a lot of redecorating, and things weren't that well looked after so new stuff basically everywhere. The good news is that the construction seems pretty solid, and everything is fine under the paintwork/wallpaper etc.

The only original things I'm keeping are the solid oak floor in the downstairs hallway, the shutters in the kitchen, and probably the long planter thing in the back garden because it would take a lot of effort to shift that.

I could live with it as it is today, but I figure I could be here for a while, may as well make it nicer to live in. Most of that budget is coming out of my new mortgage offer which is taking some of my equity out, but it's manageable.
 
HungryHippos said:
I've uploaded some pics of how it was before: https://imgur.com/a/SElY1FL

I am going to wait another couple of months to upload the after pics, because stuff is still pending like the bathrooms/kitchen etc.

The before pics make it look better than it was in reality, had to do a lot of redecorating, and things weren't that well looked after so new stuff basically everywhere. The good news is that the construction seems pretty solid, and everything is fine under the paintwork/wallpaper etc.

The only original things I'm keeping are the solid oak floor in the downstairs hallway, the shutters in the kitchen, and probably the long planter thing in the back garden because it would take a lot of effort to shift that.

I could live with it as it is today, but I figure I could be here for a while, may as well make it nicer to live in. Most of that budget is coming out of my new mortgage offer which is taking some of my equity out, but it's manageable.
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Yeah that's a nice looking house already! But certainly some strange choices of wallpaper in the kitchen and bathroom!

I'm guessing the previous owners were of an older generation? Certainly doesn't have that sleek/modern look to a fairly new house.
 
Semple said:
Yeah that's a nice looking house already! But certainly some strange choices of wallpaper in the kitchen and bathroom!

I'm guessing the previous owners were of an older generation? Certainly doesn't have that sleek/modern look to a fairly new house.
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Yup, but being older shouldn't mean lack of taste :)

For an example, in the kitchen I have removed wallpaper, painted it white, "unboxed" the free-standing fridge/freezer which was not meant to be boxed in, and added 6 hue downlights instead of the funky triple lights they had. Not finished yet, but this is a progress pic I guess.

I3En1uE.jpg


Also the kickboards aren't clipped in for some reason, the only thing keeping them in place was eachother, and the short one nearest to me was screwed into the long one that runs in front of the sink.

Removed those cabinets from near the entrance too, turns out there was a big old hole in the wall that they were covering up! :P

That was the cheap stuff to do, and the only thing I truly dislike now in the kitchen is the flooring (it's not tiled, it's fake vinyl tiles of some kind).
 
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pingwing said:
Congratulations on the little one as well! That's going to be juggling act to start with but you'll get into the swing of things, I bet you've already got some kind of plan?

Non-house life is good, hard work delivering HS2 modifications in the rail infrastructure and traveling as much as reasonably possible with mates before they all hit the marriage/baby craze (which I'm miles from). Had to give up my season ticket last season (Mark Hughes killed football for me) which is the biggest change as I hardly go, this season I've only been to Forest green away in the leasing.com trophy... Had much of a chance to see Brentford?
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We're off to look around the house today so might post a few photos after to show the scale of the works. It would honestly be better to move out and have the renovations done in one fell swoop, but not got the sign-off from my wife for that... and the neighbours would hate us from day one!

Got a garden totally redo, and then four floors of renovations!

Getting to brentford every now and then. Tailed off last year when my wife was pregnant, and only been 2-3 times this season. Reckon I might make 10-15 games this season with maybe Fulham away included. Hoping to take the kid to our final home game of the season as his first ever game, as Griffin Park is being knocked down thereafter.
 
Due to exchange early next week. Holding off going on going on a spending spree buying new furniture, just waiting confirmation.

Nice kitchen HungryHippos!
 
My purchase and sale have collapsed. Unfortunately the other half was let go by her work.

Better now than with the new mortgage. But it sucks.
 
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