Flat redecorating

Merlin5 · 25 Aug 2016 at 17:24

Well it's all happening chaps, and been a long time coming. Firstly, I have a one bedroom ground floor flat with own garden. Started proceedings in January for a lease extension. My lease extension premium has now finally been agreed at £28,600 which gives me 90 years added onto my remaining 64 years, so 154 years. It's peppercorn too so no more ground rent. My solicitors are currently finalising details and awaiting the new draft lease from the freeholders. I've got to pay the freeholder's solicitors and surveyors damn fees as well as my own solicitor and surveyor, so all told, it will have cost me about £36K.

So now I'm onto the final few hurdles before selling, which is decorating the rest of my flat. I had a lot of work done in 2012 including new kitchen, new bathroom, new windows throughout and a bunch of other external work, which cost over £20K.

But I never got around to doing my hall, bedroom and front room. So that's happening now. The kitchen and bathroom still look brand new, just needs some touching up here and there.

They started tuesday and it will probably take best part of 2 weeks to finish. New laminate flooring to go down, everything to be painted white, couple of new doors I think, new light fitting in front room. Communal areas also to be stripped and painted and I'll share the cost of that with the upstairs owner.

So here's my current gallery. I've been back and forth to the rubbish tip dumping carpet, underlay, wallpaper, etc. I've had to bag and box stuff up and just try and find space to move it to. First few pics show front room with stuff everywhere about to be removed, lol. So far, the front room and hall are now stripped and de-carpeted. Some filling has been done in hairline cracks around ceiling in front room, and some plaster will need removing in front room as it's showing signs of having blown.

http://postimg.org/gallery/krrpbj44/

R.O.S.S.I · 26 Aug 2016 at 10:08

£36k to add 90 years?! Jesus Christ is that about the going rate for this kind of thing? I thought it generally only cost a few £k (unless you live in a ridiculously old/listed building/mansion)

Thank God for my 1920's semi, has about 900 years left on it.

wywywywy · 26 Aug 2016 at 10:23

R.O.S.S.I said:
£36k to add 90 years?!

Close to central London, so...

Bunka · 26 Aug 2016 at 11:03

Cost me £18k to add 90 years....yep, it sucks!

Actually, just noticed that you were well below the 80 year threshold, hence the price being pretty much double!

Merlin5 · 26 Aug 2016 at 15:55

Yep, well below 70 years the premium goes much higher. I'd only get cash buyers offering a low price as it's effectively unmortgageable at the current 64 years remaining. It's bloody ridiculous how expensive it is. But I'd lose a lot more than that without extending it.
There's also something called marriage value added when it's below 80 years.

Freeholders sit around praying you let your lease drop to 80 years or less, as then they rake in the cash. This is because after that you will pay 50% of the flat's 'marriage value' on top of the the usual lease extension price. Marriage value is the amount of extra value a lease extension would add to your property.

I don't fully understand this though.

I'm paying 28,600 for the premium. Some of that presumably includes 50% marriage value. If marriage value is the difference in value of my flat at 64 years and at 154 years, then that difference would surely be much bigger than the whole marriage value they calculated.

Merlin5 · 27 Aug 2016 at 02:35

Bah, my works just got a bit more expensive. What we thought would be a small area of blown plaster turned out to be practically the whole wall. There's another wall in that room which has also blown. Both being plastered tomorrow.

I'm having all my old knotty pine doors painted white and am buying some new doors too, glazed and non glazed. Basically the theme is white with brushed stainless steel dimmer switches and door handles and grey laminate flooring. This will be my new entrance door https://www.howdens.com/doors-joine...nal-moulded-panel-doors/dordogne-smooth-door/

Which of these two handles looks better?

Skillmister · 27 Aug 2016 at 08:53

Interested to hear how many years the lease had left when you bought it?

There's a real problem in my area at the moment where 10s if not 100s of leases now have between 80 and 85 years left to run but there is a head leasehold owner as well as the freeholder. The head leasehold owner is one of these uncontactable investment companies who's leases also have sub 85 years left to run but they aren't willing to extend :eek:

so we're having to look into statutory course of action which could cost serious money to get anywhere with..

Merlin5 · 27 Aug 2016 at 11:05

Yeah Skillmister, statutory route is your option. That's the route I took. They're legally bound to allow you to extend. I don't know how the head leaseholder thing works though. I mean, if you own a property with a lease like me, then that makes you the leaseholder.

My flat had a new 99 year lease in December 1980 and I bought the flat in July 1987 for £47, 500. So the lease had just over 92 years. It would have been a lot cheaper for me had I thought about extending 16 or even 7 years ago when it was over the 80 and 70 year thresholds. The premium agreed is within what the lease surveyor put in her report. It's having to pay two lots of solicitor and surveyors fees that bumps it up. Fees alone are costing me about £7.5K.

LeeUK · 27 Aug 2016 at 11:26

R.O.S.S.I said:
Thank God for my 1920's semi, has about 900 years left on it.

Thank god for freehold.

bayo000 · 27 Aug 2016 at 12:09

I know it's off topic but it cost my brother about 30k to extend his lease. Which means he'll just about break even when his sale goes through next month.
Glad mine has 993 years left. Lol

I prefer the curved handle.

Merlin5 · 27 Aug 2016 at 15:03

Thanks bayo, yeah, I prefer the curved one. Curved one it will be then.

Well they've done plastering today. Under the window is finished. The two walls have had two or 3 coats and will have the final smooth coats on monday or tuesday. Couple of doors have had first coat of primer.

Skillmister · 28 Aug 2016 at 09:06

Merlin5 said:
Yeah Skillmister, statutory route is your option. That's the route I took. They're legally bound to allow you to extend. I don't know how the head leaseholder thing works though. I mean, if you own a property with a lease like me, then that makes you the leaseholder.

My flat had a new 99 year lease in December 1980 and I bought the flat in July 1987 for £47, 500. So the lease had just over 92 years. It would have been a lot cheaper for me had I thought about extending 16 or even 7 years ago when it was over the 80 and 70 year thresholds. The premium agreed is within what the lease surveyor put in her report. It's having to pay two lots of solicitor and surveyors fees that bumps it up. Fees alone are costing me about £7.5K.

Our issue (my clients, not mine thankfully

) is that it goes leaseholder > head leaseholder of say 10-30 properties > freeholder of all 100 or so. The head leaseholder's lease is barely longer than the leases of the individual flats so the flat owners can't extend unless the head leaseholder does, which they wont! Probably going to mean trying to get people to club together and buy the head leaseholder out then extend with the freeholder. A costly, time consuming and complicated procedure no doubt

Merlin5 · 29 Aug 2016 at 16:24

Those two walls in front room are skimmed and finished now, just drying out. Tomorrow they start puttlng lining paper up on various walls, and painting, in both this front room and hall. Then bedroom de-carpeting, wallpaper stripping and no doubt more plastering, lining paper and painting next week. I'm going for a light grey on the walls and white skirtings in probably just the front room. All white everywhere else. I guess this thread is like a progress log of developments from start to finish. Not sure anyone's particularly interested but hey.

koolpc · 29 Aug 2016 at 16:41

I love threads like this. Nice to see things progressing Merlin5

Merlin5 · 29 Aug 2016 at 17:00

Thanks koolpc. I'll be updating it tomorrow or the day after.

Merlin5 · 1 Sep 2016 at 18:53

Update. The two newly plastered walls in the front room are almost dried through and will be painted tomorrow. They've put a coat or two of paint around the ceiling cornices.

Today they've started putting lining paper in the hall and then it'll be painted.

Merlin5 · 2 Sep 2016 at 19:39

More updates

Lining paper is now finished in the front room. Not painted yet. I've got the weekend to now move as much stuff out of my bedroom into this front room so they can start stripping walls and de-carpeting and possibly more plastering in the bedroom.

Merlin5 · 5 Sep 2016 at 21:27

Update. I had to move everything out of my bedroom last night into the front room, which is now full of stuff. It's a right flippin' pain having to keep moving stuff from room to room. Just the crappy old wardrobe and bed remain in the bedroom. I emptied out the wardrobe to make it lighter and it was moved around as he worked on each wall. Today the bedroom walls were stripped and the carpet removed. As I suspected, all walls have to be replastered and one of them needs bonding too. The old plaster you see dates back to the 1980's.

Like my new blinds?

Actually, I'm thinking of ordering a roller blind for it from 247 blinds or blinds2go.

I've decided to get rid of two old knotty pine doors that had started to be painted, plus the glazed one in my bedroom, and am going to have all new doors. These ones :

Two shaker 4 panel glazed ones will go onto front room and kitchen which are at each end of my hall, and they're needed as the hall is quite dark. And two shaker 4 panel non glazed for the bedroom and bathroom.

Merlin5 · 6 Sep 2016 at 19:27

Bedroom got skimmed today, one wall got bonded and will be skimmed tomorrow. Workers are good, they clean up well after each day and then I do a quick vacuum, so I can still sleep in my bedroom.

Couple of questions chaps. Am I being too fussy here? There's three radiators, one in the bedroom, one in front room and one in the bedroom. Looking behind I see the ragged ends of the old woodchip wallpaper left behind because they didn't remove the rads. Now that I've seen it I can't unsee it, but should I be particularly bothered or let it go?

This old Schreiber wardrobe. I think it's circa 1970s. I bought it eons ago when I didn't really have any money and just wanted something to put clothes in and didn't care about what it looked like. I hate it now, it looks like junk and with all the new decorations, I think it's going to be an eyesore. So I want to get rid of it. I might be able to fetch a few bob for it on gumtree but I kind of want shot of it straighaway. It unscrews into sections. Can I put it out on the pavement for people to take away? I've done that with smaller items, but not sure I'd get away with a wardrobe.

koolpc · 7 Sep 2016 at 09:28

When plastering where a window has been blocked up, will a plasterer skim the whole wall so no evidence of the window will be seen?