Long absence explained…

Wow it has been ages since I posted anything on this blog. That wasn’t my intention at all I wanted to keep everything updated as it happened. Unfortunately we’ve had a serious illness in the family and that has been the priority so progress with everything has been slow. The good news is that the chemotherapy has finished so things are returning to normal.

I’m going to sort through all my photos and resize them so I can post and show what we’ve managed to do so far and what we are in the middle of….still no kitchen! :S

Back soon….honest

double glazing quotes – what to ask

When we looked at this house we knew that one of the main expenses was going to be sorting out the windows as we still have the original sash windows. Now having the original windows does sound great unfortunately the previous owners weren’t really big on upkeep consequently they seem to have considered it more important to paint yellow gloss over ceilng roses and not put any paint at all on window frames!

The house is close to the sea and on the top of a hill so very exposed to the elements and the lack of care has lead to all the windows suffering from some amount of decay, to the extent that when it rains the water leaks through the windows into the rooms!

Initially we looked into the possibility of repairing the windows and draft proofing them, there are a couple of companies that draft proof sash windows to reduce drafts and rattling so we started with quotes from them. We have 14 windows that need work and it was interesting to see that the 2 repair companies came back with similar prices but had different windows in the house as needing complete replacement. We were told that each window would take a day to fix and those that needed replacing would take 5-6 weeks to make before being installed. The quotes were really just estimates since many of the windows had been glued shut so a proper survey could not be done, this was a concern for us  as the fitter might dismantle a window only to discover that it wasn’t repairable and then we’d have to wait another 6 weeks for the new sash window to be made. The estimates were coming in at the £9,500 mark but I could see this spiralling as things progressed and our budget just isn’t that large and needs to do the whole house not just some windows. The other problem with the repair option is that we live on a busy road and single glazing doesn’t cut road noise down enough for me (I’m a very light sleeper!).

So we then decided to get some quotes for new double glazing each company that came quoted for sash style windows and for ordinary windows that are divided up half and half to look slightly sash window but actually being push out windows.

What to consider when getting double glazing quotes:

1. How is the glazing fixed into the double glazing unit – internal or external beading?

It is very important to have internally beaded double glazing as it is very simple to remove the bead and pop out the glass to break into a home if the glazing is externally beaded. I thought this was pretty obvious but one firm tried telling me external beaded was fine, needless to say I immediately discounted them!

2. Do you need toughened glass?

This one is laid down by FENSA regulations and states that if the glass is within 80cm of the floor then it must be toughened, also if you have sliding sash windows and the top slides down to within that same distance of the floor then that needs to be toughened as well.

3. Window locking mechanism?

There are normally 2 types of locking mechanism for double glazed units the most common and probably cheapest to manufacture is that attached to the handle so when you close the handle 2 mushroom shaped metal pieces on the window slide into U shaped receivers on the window frame. The second type is also contnected to the handle and shoots bolts out each side of the window into holes in the frame. The best would of course be to have both types of locking system on every window and this is possible but the cost of manufacture is higher so many double glazing manufacturers only supply one type as standard. It is worth haggling getting both types for the same price.

4. How long will it take to manufacture the windows and how long is installation?

This seemed to be consistent between companies at 2-3 weeks to manufacture standard style windows and 5-6 weeks if you want the sash style double glazed windows. We were also quoted approximately 5 days to fit all 14 windows.

One important fact that we discovered after choosing our local double glazing firm to supply and fit our windows was that they intended just screwing the new windows into the existing wooden frame! Obviously this is not what I wanted since the wood it rotten on all the windows and they looked at me as if I was mad and being difficult when I said that I wasn’t happy with it being done that way. They then said they would have to come back another day to measure up and they would bring a revised quote then. However I decided that since they had seen the property twice and still seemed to think fitting new windows into rotten frames was an acceptable way of doing things I was not happy for them to work on my home.

So after that I had to find another company and I was much happier with the new firm and although they were more expesive at least I have confidence that they take pride in their work and will do a proper job. Luckily we hadn’t signed anything or paid a deposit with the first company as in the small print of most companies it says that once a deposit is paid you are liable for the full amount even if you cancel. So be careful and learn from my close shave!

We had the final measuring up done last thursday and hope to have all the windows installed by May….just as the weather improves and draft proofing won’t be such an issue!

Home decoration – getting started

Well its been an age since I’ve been able to post with so many problems with the house and nowhere to set up the computer! Here we are a couple of months on and we achieved a lot but there is a thick layer of dust everywhere and not one room is done completely.

I decided that to get started the first thing to do was clean the house of the previous owners rubbish and general filth once that was done I decided that I had to paint the house from top to bottom with white paint so that I could get a feel for the light in the house. The colours used by the previous owners were very strong and really unpleasant shades, in my opinion dirty mustard yellow should never be used in a home especially on a ceiling! And who’d have thought you could fill a black bin liner with dog hair and human hair! YUCK!
I highly recommend buying in a job lot of white paint and doing the same even if you plan on totally replastering of course if you aren’t living in the house during renovations then you may be able to just get tradesmen in to rewire, replumb and replaster but since we can’t afford to do that the white paint does mean that the rooms we are living in at present don’t make me feel sick all the time!

All the windows in the house are in need of replacement and we’ve had a number of seriously stormy days and I’ve been worried that the glass is going to fall out as so much of the putty is missing! So its been a long job getting numerous people round to look and quote for new windows as the house has 14 windows so its not going to be a cheap job and is going to take up a good portion of our budget. My next post will be a look at the different quotes that I received and how a decision was reached for which company to use.

Changing gas and electric prepayment meters

My last day in my job was 8 February and I moved properly into the new house on saturday 9 Feb, I had arranged for the gas and electric meters to be changed on Tuesday 12 Feb in the morning. So I was up bright and early and the first engineer to arrive was the gas engineer. I showed him to the meter and he looked at it and unbelievably said that he couldn’t change the meter because it had an earthing cable attached to it and he wasn’t allowed to touch it because he wasn’t a qualified electrician! I found this difficult to understand as it is an earth cable not a live electric cable and I said this to him. He still refused to change it and I said I would disconnect it but he said he wouldn’t do it then either. He said he would arrange for someone to come back once an electrician had disconnected the earth cable so I insisted he arranged for it to be done the following day he seemed surprised that it would be so soon but I told a white lie that my partner was an electrician and would disconnect it that evening for me.

Anyway he left and a couple of hours later the electrician arrived to replace the electric meter and I told him what the gas engineer had said and he couldn’t believe it as he said to me ‘why wouldn’t he do it it isn’t live?!’. So the electric meter was changed with no hassle or problems and it was nice to know the electrician agreed with me!

Wednesday arrives and a different gas engineer arrived and checked the meter and I told him the same story about the day before and he was stunned as he pointed out under UK regulations the gas meter is legally required to be earthed and therefore the engineer from the day before clearly didn’t know his job!!! So he quickly changed the meter and then did various checks to ensure everything was correct. He found that the gas pressure wasn’t high enough at the meter it should have been a bar pressure of around 20 but it only had a pressure of 15 which isn’t enough as this then drops when the gas is being used. So he switched off the gas and called out for a team to come and find out why the pressure to the meter was so low (luckily this isn’t something I will be charged for!)

An hour or so later the new team arrived and lifted floorboards in the hall trying to find the pipe supplying the meter which is under the stairs. They couldn’t find the pipe and thought it must go under the living room floor which was a problem since we have laminate flooring in there at the moment! So then they moved to the front garden and dug a big hole and found a very old (probably original lead pipe!) pipe but they told me they knew this road had been re-piped recently and it should have been a plastic pipe. They then disappeared for a while to attend a gas leak elsewhere when they came back they then dug up the path in front of the house.

They now found the new pipe which had been pushed through the old pipe to the gas meter unfortunately when this had been done the wrong size pipe was used and it was too small which was why the gas pressure was too low (and had obviously been wrong since it had been done!) they replaced the pipe with one the correct size. Then once they had finished they had to call out another engineer to test things before the gas was switched back on for me!

Finally at about 6.30pm the last engineer turned up and did he checks and turned the gas back on for us. Hurrah!

So although this all seemed long winded at least we now know that the gas supply is correct and if we hadn’t changed the meters we would never have found this out but the low pressure would have caused lots of problems with the boiler and gas cooker (when we eventually have a kitchen!)….and best of all it didn’t cost us anything!

Moving house

Well after months of planning the contracts were exchanged and completion happened smoothly. Then the real challenge began. I had given my notice in on my job as I didn’t fancy a 3 hour commute each way although my boss would have liked me to do that and save him the stress of finding someone to replace me! But because I was leaving work in three weeks I had to do all the house packing and cleaning whilst still working which wasn’t the best idea and I would strongly recommend that you take a week off work if you are moving (even if you aren’t moving very far) as this would definitely take some of the pressure off.

Anyway, moving day was decided to be 26 February so on Friday 25 Feb I hired a van and my Dad kindly said he would drive for me as I’ve only driven a van a couple of times I wasn’t confident driving for 3 – 4 hours each way in a van full of all my stuff. So friday night we picked up the van and drove to my house and filled the van which because I’d been packing boxes for ages only took us about 1.5 hours. Then saturday morning we were up and on the road nice and early and got to my new home at about 11am, the van was unloaded a lot quicker than it was packed taking only 30 mins!

Because the house was in such a state, the previous owners never cleaned and certainly didn’t maintain the house in any way so we had loads of rubbish to get rid of but because we have double yellow lines (no parking at anytime) outside the house we can’t have a skip. So we decided to fill the van and take as much rubbish to the community tip as we could. The meant that the house immediately started to smell better!

We had checked the heating the weekend before and discovered that the gas and electric were on pre-payment meters which are a very expensive way of paying for these utilities but at least they were working! I called the supplier and arranged for them to come out and change the meters to normal meters with quarterly billing. We ran the heating constantly for 24 hours to warm the building up as it hadn’t been heated in any way for at least 6 months.

Then it was time to take the van back and work for another couple of weeks before the job finished and I could get on with the new life by the sea.

House contracts exchanged…no going back!

Earlier this week it was decided that the exchange and completion would take place on the same day (tomorrow). However my very good and organised solicitor rang and said that the vendor had requested an exchange today and completion tomorrow, as my solicitors were sure that they could do this without difficulty I happily agreed.

So now neither of us can back out of the deal without incurring huge costs. So its going to be a busy couple of weeks as we have to pack up and move 2 houses all next weekend as the properties we currently live in have been let from the beginning of February so that’s our big deadline. This wouldn’t ordinarily be a problem but neither of us can take time off work right now so with everything on our side we’ll be moved and connected to the internet again in no time!

It will prove interesting to find out how long getting broadband is going to take since I haven’t booked it in yet! Must put that on tomorrows to do list.

So tomorrow we complete and then we can pick up the keys from 8.15am on saturday I can hardly wait!

Mortgage completion date.

At long last we have a completion date for the purchase of our property As i expected completing for last friday was just too short a timescale for the logistics of transferring the money etc. So after a bit of discussion with our solicitor we have settled on this coming Friday.

All being well we will exchange on thursday and then complete on friday which then just leaves us to collect the keys on saturday and get started on cleaning!

We are very lucky in that we don’t need to move out of our current homes immediately so we can take a week to clean the property and check everything is working and if it isn’t get on with fixing it before we fill the house up with our stuff!

Mortgage, contract etc…

On friday I got home from work to find that the solicitor had sent through the final contract etc for signing. It turns out that way back in 1989 planning permission was sought for converting the house into a 1 bed flat and a 2 bed maisonette although there were some conditions to the planning application, as the conversion never took place I suspect the conditions were to do with parking as the house has double yellow lines directly outside so no parking there, plus the front garden is not big enough to turn into a driveway to get the car off the main road. Anyway we don’t want to convert so this isn’t a concern for us.

In the very impressive pack of information sent to us we had full details of the searches carried out on the property and although I have bought property before I have never seen such a full load of information before. We had to sign a stamp duty transfer form authorising the solicitor to pay the stamp duty (stamp duty land tax is payable on most properties over £120k and is 1% up to £250k although properties in some areas are stamp duty exempt the estate agent will certainly let you know if that is the case with the property you are interested in), the mortgage title deed, the contract and a buildings insurance form stating what insurance cover we have and who with and when it starts. The contract and title deed signatures had to be witnessed by a non family member. So over the weekend we got everything signed and then yesterday I organised the buildings insurance to start from this friday (well you can’t accuse me of not being optimistic!).

All being well we will exchange and complete this friday although I think this may be a little to quick for the solicitors to organise the transfer of funds etc so I expect it to next week that it actually happens….I can hardly wait

The buildings insurance is always a little annoying because you have to pay for buildings and contents insurance before you even own the building! Anyway there is no way around this so although we could have started the insurance from next week and possibly avoided paying for a week of insurance on a property we don’t own we decided it was worth paying that to potentially get the house for this weekend. Fingers crossed now

New mortgage offer…

Well now that the holiday season is over and most people are back at work it was time to make calls and see if we were any nearer to exchanging and completing on our property. I spoke with the solicitor to find out what was happening regarding the local searches and they explained that they were clarifying that the searches were on the correct property as details didn’t match up, they hope to have news by the end of this week…

Then I called the estate agents to find out what was happening regarding the damp report I requested almost a month ago. Apparently the damp treatment company are still on holiday (lucky them!) until next monday so I won’t be getting anything before then I guess!

However, we did have a fabulous late christmas gift in the form of a new mortgage offer…as you know the offer of the mortgage was made subject to various work being carried out and so we asked them to clarify exactly what was required from us to get the £5k retention back. After much deliberation they never actually answered the question but just reissued the offer without a retention this is of course the best possible outcome for us and well worth waiting a couple of weeks for, boy am I glad I asked!

So if in any doubt when you get a mortgage offer with a cash retention which will only be released on completion ask lots of questions and you never know it might be your lucky day and you too will have the mortgage company go ‘oh alright then you can have all the money after all’.

Mortgage retention – tempting fate?!

Great news we have had our mortgage offer WOOHOO sadly the bad news is that they have decided to put a retention on it Boo Hiss!

Was I tempting fate by saying the valuer hadn’t recommended a mortgage retention I wonder… Anyway the amount of the mortgage retention is £5,000 which I suppose in the scheme of what we are borrowing isn’t a horrendously huge amount, but still that 5k would be better spent immediately on the house. We are quite lucky in that we do have a budget put aside for the work we are going to do to the house so the 5k will have to come out of that to pay for the house.

The conditions of the mortgage are that we have to meet the 3 things on the valuers list within 6 months and they will release the 5k to us. All well and good except when you see that the 3 things listed are damp (okay that’s fair enough) and problems with the kitchen floor (again fair enough we knew about that needing attention) but number 3 is complete refurb inside and out which is a bit on the vague side if you ask me. After all everybody is going to have different ideas on complete refurb, I could take it to mean paint everything and make it look pretty and job is done, or I could think it means rewire, replumb, replaster, new kitchen, new bathroom, new windows….So we are seeking clarification on this point since the amount of work will pretty much decide whether we can get it done in the timeframe they are insisting on.

So should you be subject to a mortgage retention make absolutely sure you check the time frame you have to get the work done by to get the retained funds released. A nice little extra that they put in is that you have to pay upfront for the reinspection fee, so you get the mortgage, they charge you a handsome arrangement fee, and many other fees as well then because they decide against the valuers recommendation to put a mortgage retention on the mortgage offer then you have to pay more fees to get the money they’ve promised you. Of course if they didn’t reinspect you’d just say you’d done the work without actually doing it (or at least that’s how they think I suppose)

So with regard to the clarification of what we need to do for the funds to be released I rang and spoke with the mortgage company, the lady on the phone agreed it was a bit vague and open to interpretation. However she couldn’t just go and get clarification, she gave me a fax number and I had to get my financial adviser to fax them asking them for clarification, they then go back to the valuer, he will no doubt think about it for a few days before responding, they then report back to my adviser who reports back to me!!!! How incredibly long winded is that!

Anyway it’s the weekend and we have the mortgage offer so I don’t care I’m celebrating tonight