The House Thread

[isitafox]

Well, it's been a long time coming (I started clearing the garden last March/April) but finally got some grass down yesterday and space for the kids to play and relax. 

Been hard work clearing as there was a static caravan here previously so the paving slabs were well set and there was a lot of gravel and stuff to clear. I think I've shifted roughly 18-20 tonne bags of stone and garden waste (did 6 bags in the last couple of weeks). 

Slight nightmare as the area was roughly 66²m but yesterday afternoon just after 3pm I had 4 tonnes of topsoil and 70 rolls of turf delivered. With the weather being warm and dry I didn't want to leave the turf so set to barrowing all 4 tonnes myself while my dad levelled iit out as best he could. 

Finally got finished laying turf at 9pm last night, today I feel absolutely broken but pleased it's finally done. Now onto the next job 🙈

Before:

After:

[Luke Rainbird]

Nice one Dave, big effort that!

[forteh]

Might grow some muscles shifting all that lot

[monkeyseemonkeydo]

From my high horse, what are people's real-life experience of what's going on with interest rates etc.? I guess it all depends where you are in terms of type and term of 'deal' you're on. I'm glad we got out when we did!

[Luke Rainbird]

We're currently fixed at 1.35% until mid 2025 so we've dodged the pain of it, at least for now. I'm going to be shuffling a few things about when we move into the new place (currently a building site, though starting to put it back together!) so some extra borrowing likely unavoidable for us however the figure will be (relatively) small and by my numbers, even if rates remain high for a considerable period we should come out ok.

Can't help but feel for people who are tied in at nasty rates, or having to try and toss up refixing at current levels vs the added volatility of SVRs etc.

[forteh]

I'm still on my 1% base rate trackers, I've had the lowest mortgage rates imaginable for the last 15 years (and completely failed to capitalise on it ) so now they've gone up it's taking the rough with the smooth.  Fortunately my mortgage is relatively small so even though the interest rate is far higher the cost isn't too horrific.

[cwtrials]

Hey, I'm in the USA here.  Just got a mortgage a few months ago at 5.75%, which was down from 7.25% when I first applied for a mortgage in January.  It still sucks.  Our new house was a complete wreck with structrual damage I flipped, although the exterior is still rough.  Huge 3 car garage with plenty of room for bikes + toys.  I'll need to get some pictures.

Here's a house I flipped last year.  My first flip.  If I had listed it about 4 weeks sooner than I did I would've made a good chunk of money, but I listed it right after the rates started going up and it meant I worked 9 months for free.  But I didn't loose money and it was a good experience.  I removed a few structural walls, opened up the floor plan, made it a 3 bedroom (previously was a 2), new HVAC system, 18 piers plus 2 full length girders in the crawlspace, new porch, new windows, replaced a few walls from termite damage (clean your gutters people, it's not hard).  I did 90% of the work myself.

https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/2523-Rochelle-St-Durham-NC-27703/49988833_zpid/

[manuel]

Was on under 2% but new one is starting in a week. Managed to get 3.99% but it’s much longer than I initially hoped for at 5 years. It’s an extra £150 ish a month, which doesn’t sound much but for our combined pitiful earnings is quite a burn, especially when you factor in the rises in gas/elecy and even the rises in council tax! It’s a struggle, but we had it good for a long time, and it’s still about 1000000x cheaper than renting. Also we live in our own little housing bubble so if it came to it we could always leave and buy a house mortgage free in 90% of the country. (A decked out 3 bed a similar size just round the corner went for 600k🤪)
 

I have been living in constant fear that the bank will pull our deal before it starts. 

[J.KYDD]

S'all gone to shit here unfortunately. After 12 years we're breaking up so house has had to hit the market. 

https://www.rightmove.co.uk/properties/137293334#/?channel=RES_BUY

Really bittersweet looking at the listing as the photo's look great and show the house off really well. But it just reminds me how much I love this place
 

Edited July 13, 2023 by J.KYDD
Forgot link

[craigjames]

7 hours ago, J.KYDD said:

S'all gone to shit here unfortunately. After 12 years we're breaking up so house has had to hit the market. 

https://www.rightmove.co.uk/properties/137293334#/?channel=RES_BUY

Really bittersweet looking at the listing as the photo's look great and show the house off really well. But it just reminds me how much I love this place
 

Sorry Josh, that's properly shit, hope you're as well as can be expected? Get yourself down to Plymouth lad x

[monkeyseemonkeydo]

Crap to hear that, Josh. You know how I loved that palm tree! Hopefully things turn themselves around and you're doing ok.

[Luke Rainbird]

Ah man, that's shit. If you move you might lose your internet connection and we won't be able to send each other stupid videos.

House is a lovely place, I don't expect you'll struggle to sell it though with the current market might be a little more interesting than 12 months back. Welcome down this way any time mate, or we can get out on the bikes at some point for a distraction 😘

[Luke Rainbird]

Well, checking in here after a bit of a hiatus and it's quite interesting skimming back through some older posts in here. How's everyone doing now?

On 10/31/2022 at 11:59 AM, AdamR28 said:

I invested a large chunk in October last year, and yep, over 20% down now 

How's this holding up now, Ads? Another mad 12 months since but a mix of opportunities along the way, and given last October's dip hopefully moving in the right direction for you?

On 3/24/2023 at 12:46 PM, AdamR28 said:

An old lady had lived here for about 40 years before going into a home, and the house hasn't been lived in for about 2 years. All her belongings are still in here, including stuff like tins of food, clothes, etc. Its pretty wild 

Still enjoying being where you are, and has the slowing down actually happened or just a myth you've told yourself?! Did you ever get round to watching the Coronation Street VHS special?

On 7/12/2023 at 1:13 PM, Luke Rainbird said:

I'm going to be shuffling a few things about when we move into the new place (currently a building site, though starting to put it back together!) so some extra borrowing likely unavoidable for us however the figure will be (relatively) small and by my numbers, even if rates remain high for a considerable period we should come out ok.

A few months down the line, and we're getting pretty close now. May even be in this side of Christmas. Been a mental year with sale of the business, succession planning and integration, new baby etc so I'm looking forward to not pulling triple duty every day. At the minute it's a case of wake up, sort kids, work all day, house all evening, home and kids again, eat about 8/9, try to claim an hour or two to myself to wind down, go to bed too late, wake up tired and start again 

I'll stick some pics up at some point, hose has changed a reasonable amount since we got the keys (thanks feck...)

On 12/9/2021 at 1:55 PM, Luke Rainbird said:

Cheap (<1.3%) borrowing and a token (£150) monthly overpayment here. If rates go up significantly then I've hedged my bets a bit and reduced the impact, but they'd have to go up fairly significantly to beat long-term investment returns so that's where I've been funnelling the majority.

Still seems to be in the black on this one, but f**k me this renovation has made a dent.

On 3/5/2021 at 8:43 PM, manuel said:

Eventually I would hope to end up closer to the coast in the proper southwest... 

Our place in Ivybridge is now on the market. Just sayin...

 

Anybody gone full smart home recently? I don't want to go balls deep, but some lighting/routines/general integration appeals so in research mode at the moment.

[MadManMike]

I'm gradually getting more into the smart home stuff, but certainly nowhere near "full".

I have smart bulbs so I can turn them on by voice or app (And a cool feature to have them randomly turn on and off when I'm away, to make it look like someone's home). I also have Alexa controlled LED Govee lights that I've set up on Twitch so that people can redeem channel points to control them too, really cool but a little unreliable so far. The lights themselves are good, but the link between them and my stream is patchy.

Definitely going to look at other stuff, but I don't want to go so far that an internet outage makes my house unusable.

[manuel]

On 11/24/2023 at 11:06 AM, Luke Rainbird said:

Anybody gone full smart home recently? I don't want to go balls deep, but some lighting/routines/general integration appeals so in research mode at the moment.

not too much, but all the heating in the house and shed. The lighting in the shed is fully wired in, and a load of incidental lighting in the house. My top tips are - don’t get any google stuff, and Shelly stuff just works. The shed lighting is a Shelly dimmer wired into the back box onto a couple of dimmable flat panels. It has never ever failed or crashed or been unreachable. Rock solid and can work fully locally if needed. I’m planning to do the house lights at some point like that (possibly into the ceiling rose). I have a lamp on a simple shelly relay/button which is just as good. Dabbled with a little home assistant but could not be bothered to go that deep.

 

id like to get some automated blinds for the shed as it’s south facing and a lot of glass! 

[Luke Rainbird]

Nice, thanks gents. I'm still very much in the research phase trying to get my head around it all.

I was considering starting with a handful of bulbs for convenience of stuff like having hallway lights on a motion sensor after dark etc. Wiz SpaceSense stuff looks handy and it reasonably priced, and although I've seen mixed reviews they mostly seem to be where wifi signal is poor - mine will be within 2m of the router so should be ok!

Local control is pretty key IMO - as much as I see the appeal of being able to view/control from elsewhere, I want automation over remote control and being able to do things if the internet goes down (shiny new near-Gigabit line installation imminent though, yum yum) is pretty key IMO.

Home Assistant seems to get talked about a lot and from a glance seems pretty powerful if you want to go down the rabbithole. Are you running a dedicated smart hub, Rowan?

[Tom Booth]

On 11/24/2023 at 11:06 AM, Luke Rainbird said:

Anybody gone full smart home recently? I don't want to go balls deep, but some lighting/routines/general integration appeals so in research mode at the moment.

I bought a smart socket as we've moved a jukebox into a corner and I couldn't get to the switch behind it, so now I control it with my phone and I feel like Elon Fkin Musk.

[Tom Booth]

On 11/24/2023 at 3:33 PM, MadManMike said:

I also have Alexa controlled LED Govee lights that I've set up on Twitch so that people can redeem channel points to control them too

Tits out much Mike? Might have to sub..

[MadManMike]

3 minutes ago, Tom Booth said:

Tits out much Mike? Might have to sub..

Sadly not, Twitch are pretty strict on boob action - you'll have to sub to my OnlyFans instead if you want the premium content!

[Tom Booth]

VIP here I come! Better get the card out Jenny doesn't know about..

[Luke Rainbird]

On 11/29/2023 at 9:08 AM, Luke Rainbird said:

Wiz SpaceSense stuff looks handy and it reasonably priced

Ordered a pair of these. Despite the ad being very clear, they sent me an old model which doesn't have SpaceSense or Matter compatibility. FFS 

[manuel]

On 11/29/2023 at 9:08 AM, Luke Rainbird said:

. Are you running a dedicated smart hub, Rowan?

No, I’ve gone Wi-Fi over zigbee/whatever. Although the heating has a little one which is annoying. All the Shelly bits can be set up to run locally with ha if needed (I think), which is nice, but I’m not that bothered. The main reason I stopped using home assistant was I needed the raspberry pi for something else, and I wasn’t really doing anything I couldn’t do already without it

[Luke Rainbird]

Useful to know, thanks. Without being a bit more clued up it's hard to know how much value to put on internet comments around wifi networks getting cluttered, Zwave being more reliable than Zigbee etc. I suspect there's an element of theoretical in there and if you're pushing a heavy system hard it might be a factor, but for a few bulbs and sensors to try and automate a couple of bits I don't suspect I need to go that deep into it all really.

Will probably dig out one of my old RPis though 😂

[manuel]

If you were designing a house from scratch, I guess the number of device might become big enough to be a problem, but with a decent router/network set up I can’t really ever see there being a problem for a relatively small number of devices. I can’t imagine they are taking up much bandwidth at 99.9% idle most of the time

[JT!]

We got a couple of smart outlets that we have lamps connected to because a third of our home has no ceiling lights, and for some reason our living room was divided up with a wall to make a new room so the switch that shuts off a wall outlet (a cheat to keep it up to code) could only affect one room anyway, so rather than stumbling around in the dark we just tell google to turn them on.

Then I installed a smart thermostat which is extremely useful. You can have the house warmed up before you get back home.

Google home mini in every single room, $1 each because I scammed a digital radio service which had a loophole so you could sign up for multiple at the same address. They let me play music in every room, can even group them and play music through them all at the same time which is fun.