LOL!
Sorry - shouldn't laugh - it's your eloquent turn of phrase ...
I can't read easily for the tears of laughter ... and I KNOW I shouldn't ...
Oh stoppit! My drawers'll never dry!!!
And it's not because they're too close to the wall :-)
That's cruel. what have the buyers done to deserve that?
Mary
So why did you buy this place originally?
Pray tell so that we may learn.
I'm not taking the piss, only trying to understand what goes through our collective minds when we make such decisions so I can make a "good" decision for me when my time comes to move
Clive
Seems like your house was designed by the same person that fitted our windows - see my rant in the 'uPVC door' thread :)
We would never have a new house ever ever ever ever.
Ever.
Unless we built it ourselves.
-- cheers,
witchy/binarydinosaurs
We have a tenant who had the exact same problem of mould on the bedsheets and wall, and we reckon it was because he was always drying clothes in there and showering with all doors open - bathroom is opposite the bedroom in question and the whole house is sealed up tight with Everest double glazing that even a gnat's fart can't get through :)
-- cheers,
witchy/binarydinosaurs
|One thing that might help a little when you try the earlier |suggestions is to make sure that there is room for air to circulate |between the bedhead and the wall - I have used cotton reels fastened |to a headboard to provide some space in the past. | Trickle vents in the windows and some heat sound the |essentials. | Incidentally, from your description, I am not clear what is on |the outside of the wall at this point - is the house on, or in, the |hillside?
Good suggestions, again.
The house is mainly _in_ the hillside. The bit of the house which is cut-in is only a unility room one floor down.
If you're REALLY interested, thare's a piccy of the side wall here:
Thanks again.
H.
To bring a bit of balance in here... ;-)
I really like my new house! I't's 30 years old and was built with concrete blocks. Built into a granite hillside with a really nice, huge terrace across the front, facing south).
The lounge and kitchen is more-or-less one open-plan space (which we like), and it has a great utility room and cave (remember the hillside) behind.
The rooms are a good shape and size and ALL the doors into the bedrooms (including the one on the bottom floor) are in the corners of the rooms. Nice sized windows too.
Also, we have door to the outside from each of the 3 floors. And a decent-sized porch.
For those interested (or without a life of your own), I have some piccies at:
So there!
;-)
Sorry.. Of course I meant:-
The house is mainly _ON_ the hillside.
(Bit important that , - really) !
It was a bit of an impulse purchase one Sunday afternoon when, six years ago, curiosity and our weekly walk took us through the new B*****t's development and we ended up coming away with a house...
I may embroider a bit but that's more or less accurate, insofar as they were wanting to sell the last few so they could ship out and we were first time buyers (at the tender age of 23.) Since first time buyers are a lucrative commodity they offered us the 5% deposit[1], the stamp duty, £500 towards the legal fees and threw in carpets. The first two, especially, were worth a bit (it was £83k) to us so it was a very cheap way of moving from renting to owning.
Perhaps we walked into it a bit as I don't recall looking to see what older properties were going for at the time and I now understand that new houses command a premium over '2nd hand', but it would have been a while before we'd accumulated enough for a deposit etc and it was at a time when house prices were taking off - we bought Dec 1997 - so it allowed us to leap into the house market at a good time. Also, we stretched a bit for the mortgage to get a 3 bed semi with a garage rather than a 2 bed place that would have been, inconceivably, smaller again so we could have been worse off. As to the shortcomings of the place, well, we really didn't know any better I suppose. Okay, so it's a bit pokey, but there's been no big problems and with a heating bill of £50 for the winter quarter (CH on 6am-9pm at 20C every day) it's been cheap to run.
As a guide to anyone foolish enough to buy a new house, here's my pains & problems list:
Everything is too close together and I feel overlooked from all angles when outside. Parking is limited. We're lucky to have a driveway for 1.5 cars and being a dead-end we own the bit of private tarmac right outside which we own which is okay, but round us there are drives that are the length of a supermini and garages that are in the wrong place resulting in a general feeling of being in a car park.
Paint: Whatever paint they used was pants. Every bit of outside white gloss seemed to start peeling after about a year. Someone in the street had them back several times but it never stayed up for long. A friend down the way found that they'd forgotten to paint one of their lounge walls - although I expect the poor painters suffered from magnolia blindness after a bit.
Rot: The same friends have just had their windows replaced as they were starting to rot. Part of this seems to be due to coats of paint never being applied in the first place, particularly outside under the ledge.
Gardens: Poor turf in the front and about 30 tonnes of builders waste in the back. Arrrggghhh!
Plasterboard walls: I have this theory that those people who go mad in a shopping center with a machine gun or machete have probably just spent the morning in Homebase going cross-eyed looking at spring toggles and the rest trying to work if they're 'what you want' for fixing A to B.
Access: As mentioned before, no door in the garage. Since the garage is sandwiched between us and the pair of semis next door, getting from front to back is a 300yard dash round next door to the back gate. Yes, we could have put a door in, but I just couldn't face the bother knowing that we'd eventually move.
Balance??!??!?
:-) Thankyou for all the comments! I'm glad my rabid foaming amuses - if I didn't laugh, etc, etc!!
Caveat emptor! It'll do them good. Once you've had a B*****t's semi for 6 years you become an absolute expert when looking to buy as, structural issues aside, you're well aware of every possible shortcoming a house can have!
Anyway, must be careful what I say - it's taken 10 months to sell (the housing market is dead, long live the housing market), so I've got to say nothing but positive things ;-)
Even then its fraught, when after gazing at the plans for a year and a half she walks in and say 'oh no. The bed can't possibly go there, and the TV has to be over there...and I really wanetd the towel rail there after all, and I don't want to have the door open straight onto the toilet' etc etc.
En suite fantasies have a lot to answer for really.
All this stuff is old hat - happened in teh 60's with modern 'high rise' accomodation, when people moved from draughty damp slums to modern flats, but still expected to hag the washing round the living room and keep all the doors and windows shut.
And couldn't affor the 'modern' electric heating either...
Agreed. But I do wonder whether penetrating damp from the hillside might be involved somewhere. I have no experience of modern houses built into hillsides where second floor bedrooms are not two floors above the nearest soil.
His recently acquired 30 yr old house...
Cave huh? You could build (dig) and extension without planning permission, and no-one would know, except the bats. And you might have to go a bit "great escape" with the stuff you dig out.
Bob
Old hat? Yes of course, but it still needs to be explained - we all have to learn it at some time. I am amazed how people react sometimes when they are told their damp problem is condensation - it's like telling someone about their B.O. :o)
Ah. I see. Thanks.
Mary
Another thought. Is there any possibility in a seventies house that you ahve one of the earlier foam cavitry wall insulants which has cracked and allowed water penetration? Do your neighbours have similar problems, with/without heating in the room?
photos to download! David
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