Thoughts, comments, observations, wise words of advice? Please!

LoFi

Corvus said:

Our place is listed and there's NFW I'd get a listed place again. A year to get approval for a shed, two surveys for a £3 bracket in the roof, etc. Interior mods when fireplace needed fixing, big PITA.
Although a lot depends on the particular planning people still I wouldn't do it again.

I grew up in a listed house (16th century farmhouse) - my main memory around conservation was being told we couldn't take down a wall built in the 1960's to expose an 18th C fireplace and bread oven, followed by my dad later telling the conservation officer that one of us had slipped with a sledgehammer and knocked a bloody great hole in it, so we had to take the rest down for safety reasons.

"Funny how often that sort of thing happens", the officer said with a metaphorical wink, before signing off on it.

TheMarlin

Man up. Do it. 

Corvus

@LoFi good style from your Dad, and the ossifer. We have take a similar attitude since thought without actual hammer, so far. I have too many planning hassles to write here, what they do is good & right in principle but in practice it can be very difficult & expensive to comply with what are sometimes fanatical/mad requests and if you have nutcase planning officers it's just a big pain. So much is down to the individuals you get to deal with.

TheBlueWolf

Go for it!

Personally I'd rather live with the experience of at least having had a go, even if it goes tits up. Hopefully that won't happen for you but it's better than kicking yourself for not trying.

DesVegas

you gotta make the wife happy

TTony

Today appears to be a "go on you idiot ... move" day.

Confirmation from the Conservation Officer that he agrees with my notes from our meeting, ie that he approves of the various things that we'd want to do.  We'd still need formal Listed Building Consent, but if he's OK'd the changes in principle, we've done everything we can at this stage to clear the LBC hurdle.

Confirmation from the vendors that they'd be happy for us to get some of the work done between exchange and completion - minor things like removing the current full, blocked & crumbling septic tank and having a new treatment plant installed - so we could at least move in to a functioning building.

And we just won £1m on the lottery, so all the funding problems go away.





2 out of 3 ....


Architects contacted to start the detailed drawings!

lloyd

DesVegas said:

you gotta make the wife happy

Who's* though?

*whose? always confuses me, as do past and passed.

jonnyburgo

Weigh up the pros and cons, write lists. Find out everything you can about the area. Get a god financial consultant to go through everything with a fine tooth comb. And if you want peace and happiness for the rest of your days, then just do whatever the wife says.

TTony

lloyd said:

DesVegas said:

you gotta make the wife happy

Who's* though?

*whose? always confuses me, as do past and passed.

@Lloyd think of the apostrophe as replacing a character (or two), and it gets a less confusing.

Thus "who's" would mean who is wife, or who has wife (etc) which wouldn't make sense in this context, and therefore the odds are that "whose" (which is the "possessive" form) is correct!

lloyd

TTony said:

lloyd said:

DesVegas said:

you gotta make the wife happy

Who's* though?

*whose? always confuses me, as do past and passed.

@Lloyd think of the apostrophe as replacing a character (or two), and it gets a less confusing.

Thus "who's" would mean who is wife, or who has wife (etc) which wouldn't make sense in this context, and therefore the odds are that "whose" (which is the "possessive" form) is correct!

Ta, thing is with this one is that an apostrophe is used to indicate possession (replacing the archaic 'e' that would be in there e.g "lloydes terrible grasp of grammar" becomes "lloyd's terrible grasp of grammar"-I think no?) so that trips me up-I need to re-start reading again, used to devour books so grammar was impeccable.