Home Reno and decor thread..🏫📞🧹🥾🪓🪜

[Big Ramy 1314]

So another brand new thread.. Anything home or garage, cottage, caravan, etc related. plumbing, painting, carpentry, electrical, whatever you are doing. Here is the place to post, question, advice, vent, whatever ...

So Mrs. Ramy wants 3 bedrooms upstairs painted, no bother. I made the mistake of buying Glidden flat based paint instead of a self priming paint, now I have to put on a second coat. I was trying to save a bit of money, but in the long run I believe for the other rooms I will pay extra, maybe get a better brand of paint, "Behr" and possibly a self priming paint. Good news is I can get the first room completed and learn from it. I have painted before years ago, so getting back at it slowly.. Even the brushes and rollers make a big difference. It can get quite dear if you let it.. Anyhoo, back on the brush... 😪😂

[TDYER63]

I believe painting is meant to be therapeutic Ramy so it may help with those anger issues 😉

Personally I find it boring as fook so would sooner pay someone else to do it . Mr T isn’t great at painting, I would trust him with a  cupboard or spare room maybe, but not a room we use a lot. And definitely not wallpapering after he hung the wallpaper upside down a few years ago. He is quite good at other DIY things though . I am shit. To hell with feminism, If Mr T bought me a toolset for Xmas he would be the unfortunate recipient of his own gift 👱‍♂️⛏️

Definitely worth investing on decent paint though. It doesn’t need to be extortionate but probably not B&Q own brand type. The painter we get always uses Crown . 

[duncan II]

I hate DIY and am rubbish at it. Barely attempt anything these days. I actually wish more people trusted the pros. When we bought our house from DIYers there was so much expense involved in getting people who knew what they were doing in to sort out the utter mess the people had left. That was a warning for me - never buy a house from keen DIYers.

[Big Ramy 1314]

19 hours ago, duncan II said:

I hate DIY and am rubbish at it. Barely attempt anything these days. I actually wish more people trusted the pros. When we bought our house from DIYers there was so much expense involved in getting people who knew what they were doing in to sort out the utter mess the people had left. That was a warning for me - never buy a house from keen DIYers.

Well said. I have owned 3 houses in my lifetime mate, and have always done my research on the real estate agent, had a proper house inspection, and never rushed into it. Always look ahead to how long you plan on living in the home, and what expenses you will need over the years, windows, shingles, renovation, etc.....

[TDYER63]

This is not DIY related but it is connected to home improvements so just mentioning it to warn others . Its a bit of a saga so apologies in advance …

Last year we were getting an extension to the house. Not massive, it was a sort of sun room , but still cost  a fair bit of money. The company I got to build it we’re offering a finance deal where you could get a large percentage of the cost on 1 year interest free and as long as you paid it back in a years time you only paid £29. 
We had some savings put by for the extension and with interest rates going up I thought it was a good idea to take the interest free period and get some interest on our own savings by investing them for a year. 
The finance agreement was arranged between the building company and the finance company. The finance company was completely regulated. 

Around this time last year I was in Spain for a week and before we left to go to Spain a fair amount of work still needed done on the sun room. It was like a building site inside and hadn’t been rendered outside.

Just before we came back from Spain i got an email from the finance company welcoming me as a customer. I thought it was strange as it sort of suggested that the loan had been drawn down but I knew the work wasnt complete. The company had built the room before working out how to access under the house to get plumbing and lighting from the existing house into the new room. We had got a call whilst in Spain from the building company to say they could not access under the house from where they had hoped to and asked if they could make a hole in the bottom of fitted wardrobes in a spare room. I told them no. I wasn’t having them rummaging through wardrobes when i was out the country and I was home in a couple of days.

Got home and the external rendering was wrong. I wanted smooth render and they had pebble dashed it. As well as this I was a bit concerned about the email from the finance company so called them first to ask if they had paid the builders the money . They confirmed they had. I explained about the rendering and that no heating or lighting was connected and asked them why they had paid the money. They said I had signed a satisfaction note to say I was happy with the works.
I was gobsmacked and asked for a copy. Sure enough someone had signed my name to say I was satisfied with everything. Except the note had been dated whilst I was in Spain and whoever signed it had misspelt my first name. And it wasn’t my signature. 
Contacted the finance company and they said they would look into it and get all the works sorted. Everything got sorted and they came back saying the building company said I signed it. I asked how I could have signed it if I was in Spain ,  they said the building company had said I had post dated it. Even though the room  was not remotely close  to being finished when I went to Spain I was supposed to have signed a note saying  I was satisfied ?  I challenged it but it was clear they were doing nothing about it because as far as they were concerned the contract note was simply a document the building company and the finance company agreed between themselves and did not form part of the agreement. They also said that because no other customers had complained about this particular builder signing a note then they weren’t taking it further. 

I couldn’t believe my ears. They have a system in place to give comfort that customers are happy with the work before money is released yet when something goes wrong they simply say its not part of the agreement. 
I was advised to go to the police. I  Explained everything to them and sympathetic as they were they said that because money had not actually been fraudulently taken from a bank account , and it was money the company would have finally been due , they could not do anything. They advised i get a lawyer and sue.
The police called the company anyway to let them know they were aware of the situation and the owner told the police that 2 of his workers had witnessed me signing it and if I didn’t stop bad mouthing them he would sue, I actually burst into tears at this point.
I had been advised to slate them on social media by friends and I had refused to do this because i was concerned it would affect innocent employees in the company. And here was the owner telling the police he had 2 members of staff witnessing my signature and that I was the one harassing them.

It was really stressful.  I work in a bank and couldn’t ever imagine someone reporting a forged signature and nothing getting done. I Considered going to a lawyer but the company have significantly more financial clout than I do , they are not  a massive company but the owner is wealthy. The work had been done and i wasn’t sure what there was to gain by dragging it on ,  it was a horrible experience and needed to move on as it was eating away at me. I felt like I was being gaslighted. 

I tried one last thing as i really did not want this to happen to anyone else , as next time the work may not actually be completed. I therefore put a complaint into the financial ombudsman against the finance company . Not for money , but to try and get the process changed where the satisfaction note must either come direct from the customer or the customer is copied into the email between the company and finance company. 
They actually called me to say they were really sympathetic to the situation but they couldn’t uphold my complaint as the finance company had given me an extra month before I needed to pay back the money due to the delay with the work. They said they had no control at all over imposing new controls. The lady said she  wanted to rule in my favour and had escalated it to her senior who said that unfortunately they could only work within the guidelines they have . 

So, the point of this very long post is to warn people to be very careful when signing up for these things. There was absolutely nothing untoward about the actual lending itself however the controls that are in control with these things are truly lacking IMO . If you are in this situation ensure no money can be sent without your direct approval . It was bad enough and caused me grief for months but could have been a lot worse if the building company went bust or something similar . I really hope karma exists and those people get their comeuppance.