The House Projects Thread

[Gavster]

As our 1952 ex council house has been an utter pain, walls that were 3” out of plumb, multiple ceilings, weird central heating routes etc. Well we decided to buy another one next door to add to the hassle.

A few more signatures to sign and it’s ours. Holly Protect from this fine forum sorted it all for us and it’s a rare case of being beneficial to us and to the person renting it.

Plan retire well by 55 is in full effect!

Dave!

That's epic Dave, congrats!

[jamcg]

Everything crossed for you @gavster

[V8Granite]

Fingers crossed all the hassle comes to an end in Feb then!!

Dave!

[Jobbo]

As our 1952 ex council house has been an utter pain, walls that were 3” out of plumb, multiple ceilings, weird central heating routes etc. Well we decided to buy another one next door to add to the hassle.

A few more signatures to sign and it’s ours. Holly Protect from this fine forum sorted it all for us and it’s a rare case of being beneficial to us and to the person renting it.

Plan retire well by 55 is in full effect!

Dave!

Nice one!

3” out of plumb sounds perfectly aligned to me

[V8Granite]

I’m currently optimistic, we get a lively neighbour and tenant who needs a break, she gets a low rent and a bit of stability.

Soon I’ll be wondering what the hell did we do and why am
I fixing this piece of crap

Your 3” out of plumb is lovely character, mine is just bad workmanship!!

Dave!

[Mito Man]

The residents group for the apartment complex I live in has just formed a limited company as we hope to get enough people to sign up to take over the right to manage it. So far I am due a £100 refund as the management company miscalculated electricity bills.
Other silly bills so far are spending £140,000 a year renting 4 treadmills and 3 exercise bikes, a pair of ellipticals and some weights.
Spending £20,000 on a tree surgeon to remove a single tree, about 10 inch in diameter, in the middle of the park.
Spending over £1 million per year on 6 concierge staff.
Have an investigative accountant who is doing a nice job of making the current thieving management company squirm.
Hopefully my service charge will go down soon.

Don't ever buy a leasehold!

[Swervin_Mervin]

The residents group for the apartment complex I live in has just formed a limited company as we hope to get enough people to sign up to take over the right to manage it. So far I am due a £100 refund as the management company miscalculated electricity bills.
Other silly bills so far are spending £140,000 a year renting 4 treadmills and 3 exercise bikes, a pair of ellipticals and some weights.
Spending £20,000 on a tree surgeon to remove a single tree, about 10 inch in diameter, in the middle of the park.
Spending over £1 million per year on 6 concierge staff.
Have an investigative accountant who is doing a nice job of making the current thieving management company squirm.
Hopefully my service charge will go down soon.

Don't ever buy a leasehold!

Our '30s semi is a 999yr leasehold. £5/yr I think and sometimes they remember to ask for it

[Gavster]

The residents group for the apartment complex I live in has just formed a limited company as we hope to get enough people to sign up to take over the right to manage it. So far I am due a £100 refund as the management company miscalculated electricity bills.
Other silly bills so far are spending £140,000 a year renting 4 treadmills and 3 exercise bikes, a pair of ellipticals and some weights.
Spending £20,000 on a tree surgeon to remove a single tree, about 10 inch in diameter, in the middle of the park.
Spending over £1 million per year on 6 concierge staff.
Have an investigative accountant who is doing a nice job of making the current thieving management company squirm.
Hopefully my service charge will go down soon.

Don't ever buy a leasehold!

Holy shit

With bills like that the collective enfranchisement should be a no-brainer. How on earth they expect to get away with that? I can also confirm that leasehold properties can be a complete PITA

[ZedLeg]

6 living wage salaries come to about £150000. Did the building manager buy a house for the concierges to live in?

[Mito Man]

They get away with it for a few reasons. The management company deal with all the apartments built by the Berkeley group, so that’s already a significant market share. Then other management groups are similarly corrupt. They actually reference that “we are increasing prices to bring them in line with similar developments”.
Another issue is that naturally, being in London, 70% of the apartments were sold to overseas investors so for years now we’ve been trying to get the minimum 50% of leaseholders required for this but couldn’t.
However through the passage of time and newer more shiny apartments being built it seems like a lot of the foreign investors have moved on and the Facebook group is a lot more busy now so we may meet 50% minimum.

Also the concierge staff are lovely people and are not being paid a huge salary. It’s all disappearing into the management company who, going by Glassdoor reviews, treat their staff like utter crap.

[Jobbo]

The residents group for the apartment complex I live in has just formed a limited company as we hope to get enough people to sign up to take over the right to manage it. So far I am due a £100 refund as the management company miscalculated electricity bills.
Other silly bills so far are spending £140,000 a year renting 4 treadmills and 3 exercise bikes, a pair of ellipticals and some weights.
Spending £20,000 on a tree surgeon to remove a single tree, about 10 inch in diameter, in the middle of the park.
Spending over £1 million per year on 6 concierge staff.
Have an investigative accountant who is doing a nice job of making the current thieving management company squirm.
Hopefully my service charge will go down soon.

Don't ever buy a leasehold!

Our '30s semi is a 999yr leasehold. £5/yr I think and sometimes they remember to ask for it

It’s not nearly so much of a problem with a house because there’s almost certainly no service charge. But you can probably compel the landlord to sell the freehold. And you should pay the annual rent even if they don’t ask for it, because pretty much every lease will say the landlord can forfeit for non-payment of rent even if it hasn’t been demanded.

[Gavster]

They get away with it for a few reasons. The management company deal with all the apartments built by the Berkeley group, so that’s already a significant market share. Then other management groups are similarly corrupt. They actually reference that “we are increasing prices to bring them in line with similar developments”.
Another issue is that naturally, being in London, 70% of the apartments were sold to overseas investors so for years now we’ve been trying to get the minimum 50% of leaseholders required for this but couldn’t.
However through the passage of time and newer more shiny apartments being built it seems like a lot of the foreign investors have moved on and the Facebook group is a lot more busy now so we may meet 50% minimum.

Also the concierge staff are lovely people and are not being paid a huge salary. It’s all disappearing into the management company who, going by Glassdoor reviews, treat their staff like utter crap.

Wow, they must be trousering huge amounts of cash just from your development alone. If you need a good landlord/tenant solicitor, I know a fantastic one

[Mito Man]

Almost 1700 apartments. We have a solicitor from within the group and the accountant and they seem to know what they’re doing so far. I just want my compensayshun

[V8Granite]

It always amazes me that with those numbers involved they think they can get away with it ?

Dave!

[KiwiDave]

We're on week 8 of our renovations today and I spent last week back at home because of an event back in Auckland. Now back out at the rental by the lake.

Original schedule was 8weeks for upstairs, we return home and live upstairs, then another four weeks working on downstairs. Just before I returned to Auckland about ten days ago, they told us they thought they could have all of it done in 9 weeks, providing we stay away for week 9 (so extend our rental a week.) When was the last time you heard of a builder bringing the schedule forward!?

Anyway, when I went back last week and took a look at everything I wasn't convinced. They'd talked about plastering and painting all of which looked like it hadn't been done. Turns out there were some crossed wires, what needed to be plastered and painted had been done, tiling was well under way and everything is on track. I spent all week working at home in my office with the door shut, but when I did venture out I could watch the tiler do his thing - real craftsman and I'm really stoked with his work. We uncovered a bodged previous plumbing job with the hot water cylinder, almost by accident. Essentially figured out the drain for the pressure relief valve was never going to work and had it ever gone the ceiling and rooms below would have been toast. So that's been fixed as a variation to the contract. We added extra insulation work as a variation too. So far the only real gremlin has been the timber structure in the bathroom walls needed redoing to be closer spaced to support the weight of tiles.

Tentatively, we're actually on track to be in a shorter time frame. Colour me astonished.

My only gripe so far has been their lack of dust sheets, which have kinda covered the whole upstairs of the house where they've been working in a thick layer of dust. Not impressed and a bit pissy about it. Before I left yesterday I dust sheeted the shit out of downstairs myself to try and get the point across.

[KiwiDave]

Two posts in a row to add...

I spoke too soon...

Downstairs bathroom demolition started today. Simple room, nothing fancy. All of the framing behind the plaster board, all the prior plumbing, all absolute shit. Random pipe attached to something somewhere had been cut and left to gently leak down the wall behind the plaster and it looks like the toilet, or a previous toilet may have been leaking as under the (not glued down in any way) lino there's mold marks on the concrete slab.

So a LOT more work to do in there than originally planned.

Arse.

[mik]

Constructi0wn3d?

(c) Maurice

[duncs500]

Been slowly working on realising my dream of having a nice garage. Had a new leccy door put in and stuck down some of those PVC tiles, pretty pleased with the results:



Took me ages as majority of it I've been doing on lunch breaks. And yes, there are expansion gaps on all edges before anyone asks.

I sealed the floor first and it's been a total game changer in terms of the dusty horror that was the old floor. Coupled with a door that actually seals against the floor instead of having a two inch gap, the car now doesn't instantly become a dusty mess when sat in there. Plus with the new door I don't have to clamber out to close the door all the time.

Can't describe how happy it makes me.

Garage update, I think I've now done everything I want to do to it. Since the last pic I've:

- Painted the ceiling
- Cleaned and sealed the bricks
- Put up a bigger LED strip light
- Added a motion sensor switch
- Put up some pictures and a light sign
- Sorted out the storage facilities, and a few extra bits like a bin and paper towel dispenser

I'm pretty happy with it now. Cleaning and sealing the bricks took forever, but I think it was worth it. The motion sensor switch (after a bit of work to get it set up right) is great, never have to switch the light on or off manually.

Only frustrating thing is that I had the posters framed professionally and they are buckling at the sides and look crap, but they've agreed to look at them again.

[mik]

That looks great Duncs.

I keep toying with the idea of doing something to my garage floor, although it really doesn't need anything. But then I saw this last week and was like ooooh.....

[duncs500]

I thought about doing an epoxy painted floor (appreciate that one is a bit more advanced), but all the stuff I read was really mixed. I think it can be great of you have the right gear, prep it properly etc, and use the right product but I've seen a lot that peels and looks really scruffy after not long. Also fancied a tiled floor, but that also looked like hassle and cost (not that Duramat is cheap!). In the end, this floor was easy to DIY and so far seems pretty durable.