Rach_17, on this forum there's lots of people, lots of topics and lots of opinions (and of course lots of different ways to express those opinions). I hope you don't leave over just one or two of them

Agree with Trishwish. Please stay here, Rach_17. Don't be put off by one rather tactless post. We all have different opinions, that's what forums are for. My blood pressure is perpetually at boiling point on here, especially when reading the sneers about carpeted bathrooms. But you just have to be dispassionate about it.

quote:

Originally posted by immy21:
pebble dash
laminate flooring
upvc windows
Aluminium windows
pine tongue and groove
capeted bathrooms
carpeted kitchens
plastic french style marble effect fireplaces
wallpaper up to dado height
staffordshire bull terriers
black ash furniture

We have 6 out of 11 of those
Shall I get me coat?

i fink laminate flooring looks gd! lolz. or is dat just me?

I want to pick up on Immy’s point about normally sensible people Chaving up their houses, and particularly, the ubiquitous ‘house bling’ that increasingly adorns the outside of many homes – sky dishes, plastic replacing wood, polycarbonate replacing glass, decorative brickwork obscured by paint and render. And the destruction of that group identity as expressed in the architecture (say the uniformity of a terrace) in favour of a false individuality based on an adherence to (standardised!) mass products (replacement doors and windows).

Surely Simon Thurley (Building Britain, C4) has it right, a (British?) temperament stubbornly in favour of a external conformity with an unrestrained individuality on the inside needs to be re-asserted (and, maybe, a ‘no’ to Anne Maurice). It all seems be the wrong way around.

I can't see what's wrong with a carpeted bathroom, myself (with no kids, at least). Does everyone else just have a very unsteady aim?

I think that good quality laminate flooring looks good if broken up by rugs etc. My friends' house is one solid sea of laminate throughout (floors, kitchen doors, worktops...), and it is privately known to me and my boyfriend as Laminate City.

I apologise to rach 17 and anyone else that I may have offended with my earlier post. I didn't mean to tar all tenants - council housing assn or otherwise with the same brush. It was a tactless post and I should have taken the foot out of my mouth first.


Carpeted bathroom - gets damp and hard to dry.

I don't think that you can call a Sky dish 'ubiquitous house bling'. A Sky dish is a functional item. I do not have one on the front of my house for its look, I have one because I want all of the tv channels.

quote:

Originally posted by Cat Tyrrell:
I apologise to rach 17 and anyone else that I may have offended with my earlier post. I didn't mean to tar all tenants - council housing assn or otherwise with the same brush. It was a tactless post and I should have taken the foot out of my mouth first.

Carpeted bathroom - gets damp and hard to dry.

Accepted - sorry for getting on my high horse...

My parents once had a major neighbour from hell episode, in a quiet middle-class village - they went on holiday and their elderly neighbour moved the fence dividing their property AND cut down their trees you can't tell an nightmare neighbour by their tenure or their choice of Sunday paper

At the weekend we're taking up the bathroom carpet and replacing it with some B&Q wizardry

quote:

Originally posted by Cat Tyrrell:
Carpeted bathrooms shudder!
My newbuild canme with carpet in the bathroom you soon see the disadvantages. Never again!
Black ash furniture - chavs? Surely not -I have black ash furniture but am replacing it with birch. The dusting is phenomenal.

I ALWAYS carpet my bathroom. I would NEVER have anything else. I replace my carpet whenever I feel it requires replacing. What on earth is wrong with a carpet in a bathroom. In fact I think all my friends have carpets too. I have a vac - and I use it - nothing wrong at all with carpets.

quote; I ALWAYS carpet my bathroom. I would NEVER have anything else. I replace my carpet whenever I feel it requires replacing. What on earth is wrong with a carpet in a bathroom. In fact I think all my friends have carpets too. I have a vac - and I use it - nothing wrong at all with carpets. end quote


Thank God I'm not the only person on the planet who loves a carpeted bathroom. No children in our house, they are long gone, and the carpets (in both bathrooms) are SPOTLESS, absolutely and perfectly clean. There is no reason on earth for two ADULTS (I stress adults) should not have a carpeted bathroom.

As for getting damp, as long as the carpet is specially made for bathrooms, eg with a foam back and not containing any wool, it doesn't get damp at all. We use extractor fans when bathing or showering and the rooms are not damp, so the carpets stay as dry as anywhere else in the house.

Maybe excessive House Doctoring of the inside of our houses, and a bland interior for the benefit of an imagined buyer, fuels a pent-up desire to differentiate the house on the outside, but why is this then executed in such a sloppy way? At least a shark installation on the roof is interesting , but much better to try and retain the architectural whole of (say) a terrace row and differentiate on the details – front door colour, garden planting, etc.

I agree that a dish is a good way to get all the channels, but does it have to be on the front of the house? Obviously the choice of location is restricted, as it must ‘see’ the satellite, but sometimes choosing the front is down to installation convenience and little (if any) thought is given to alternatives. I can’t see why a loft installation is so impossibly difficult – radio waves do penetrate roofing materials, and if attenuation were really a problem then maybe a wider dish or a higher gain LNB would fix it.

Phugoid...

I've seen sky dishes on both front & back of houses... it has to face a particular angle so that you can receive the signals.. I think that someone I used to know (can't remember if it was a flat or a terrace) couldn't have sky because they couldn't get the angle.

We get interference from the trees opposite our flat - so I think that having the receiver in the loft would be a no no.

To be honest, I don't really see dishes anymore..

Bec

I can't see a problem with carpets in the bathroom. I used to have one and it makes sense to me. No slipping up on a wet slippery floor, and its warmer on the feet.

Reading some of these posts, who on earth has a carpeted kitchen? Now that truely is strange and inpractical!

Becci – I think you may be right – the transmission power is limited at the satellite end, and so the LNB needs to be quite sensitive, but I guess that the problem is down to Sky setting the specifications for the dish – they’ve gone for a smaller (less obtrusive dish) and a low cost LNB, so the tolerance to interference (trees, roof, etc) is actually quite small. I don’t think they offer an alternative (higher gain) LNB as standard or are really that interested in doing the non-standard or more sensitive installations.

quote:

Originally posted by BecciLane:
To be honest, I don't really see dishes anymore..

Bec

....thinking about it Bec, neither do I any more!!! They used to stick out like sore thumbs on houses, but I think we've become so accustomed to them, they're no longer "different".... more the "norm". Ours is on the back wall of our house and even with it being a bungalow, I can honestly say, I don't "notice" it very much at all!

quote:

Surely Simon Thurley (Building Britain, C4) has it right, a (British?) temperament stubbornly in favour of a external conformity with an unrestrained individuality on the inside needs to be re-asserted (and, maybe, a ‘no’ to Anne Maurice). It all seems be the wrong way around.

This was a great programme.
It brought together all that history learn't at school in a thoughtful and fascinating way.
With all the stuff about the new Pope at the moment it makes one wonder whether we have moved on at all? (perhaps I should keep off that subject in case I offend!)

I did feel that Simon Thurley was disingenuous regarding the way he tackled the period of Modernity, saying it began AFTER WW11 for instance when it most certainly did not. He attributed all the influence of Modernity from Europe as he put it, as negative to this country and despite showing Goldfingers building which I believe is listed, he wiped away the whole era as a total disaster for housing in this country.

There was an interesting article in The Times, Bricks & Mortar,Friday, April 15 regarding five buildings built in the '60s and '70s that are proposed for listing.

The 'Jerry' buildings in the Victorian period were the same as the poor quality of some of the buildings of the sixties, but we don't dismiss the Victorians as house builders, do we?

The programme was thought provoking and could have perhaps been better for criticism of the mass house building of the last 3 decades rather than attacking Modernity. In addition, our country's resistance to more sustainable building methods and better design.

What would put me off:

Place badly needs redecorating. No.
Shabby carpets, need replacing. No.
Curtains ditto. No.
Kitchen needs gutting. Yes.
Kitchen needs updating. No.
Bathroom ditto. Yes.
Bathroom is downstairs. No.
Back garden gets no sun. No.
Place smells of dog. No.
Place is dirty. Borderline.
Small Rooms. Yes.
Bad area. YES.
Shared access (ie Vict. terr.) Yes.
Noisy road. Yes.
Potential building plots nearby. Yes.
Needs re-roofing. Yes.
Needs woodworm spray or damp course. Possibly as I've been there and done that and found it worse than new kitchen or any other renovation undertaken.
Majority of original features missing from Victorian hse. YES.
Re-wiring. No.

Interesting to see no one has mentioned lack of central heating. We had GCH installed when we put our house on the market thinking it would be a big minus point to not have it. From the comments it looks like the downstairs bathroom could be more of a problem, although personally I don't mind it at all. Electricity pylons, industrial site or a school nearby would put me off.

what's wrong with needing a damp course? I had my kitchen damp coursed in my previous house and it didn't seem much of a problem. Mind you, it was only the kitchen so I could still use the hall and sitting room while it was going on. Is it very inconvenient if you have to have the whole lot done simultaneously?

I didn't put an offer in on a house I really fancied because my builder pal said it would need a new damp course, and with that he could tell that all the outer walls would lose most of their plaster so it would require damp course, plastering and decoration, for which I hadn't got the money.

And jellybabe, I think people haven't mentioned central heating perhaps because we take it for granted so much that it will be there. We were perhaps talking more aesthetics than anything else. I didn't even view and houses without central heating.

Just to add a note on the subject of cul-de-sacs (Sorry, only just read through this post) I've nearly always lived in cul-de-sacs (just by chance rather than choice really) and whether they are fine or not depends on the area not the children! Where we live now the kids play outside and they're fine. Mind you half the road is bungalows which are mainly pensioner occuppied so I guess it all balances out. Oh and we've got pebble dash and UPVC windows - I don't like them either but sadly we can't all afford exactly what we want!

I was put off a house but the smell of years of cigar smoke and old incontinent man. Maybe seems silly but I know I'd have smelt those smells in that house for years!