TattyWill
Standard Member
Hi all,
We just sold our first property at £8000 more than what we bought the new property for. While making a £49,000 profit after two years of living there. House prices in our area are extortionate for what they are. But we are right next to Gatwick airport so its expected. In order to move up in the property ladder/game we had to buy a pretty run down property and do it up if we were going to make money on this one too.
I managed to get permission to build a floating wall in the first property with LED lighting surrounding after many months of scouring the AV forums a few years ago.
***old house floating wall***
We were running...
-42" LG TV,
-PS4/PS3 streaming Netflix etc
-A couple of networked 3TB drives with all our movies and content connected with our Macs, iPhones and iPad etc.
-Apple airport Expresses connected to multiple speakers around the home.
-A crap 60W sound bar from Tescos/replaced with my old 2.1 Hifi set up when the sound bar went bang.
I am interested in running some form of CCTV in the new home too.
I was hoping to use these in the new property but all connected in some form of AV/Server rack in a cupboard somewhere. (I may need a little help from the forums looking for ideas on that one).
This property was a old hunting lodge that had been converted 20+ years ago from what we had been told. it took 6 months for the sale to go through we were right on the edge of having to renegotiate a new mortgage offer which wouldn't of been ideal as the wife was now considering staying off work to look after the little one. so we wouldn't of had as good of a deal as we currently had. in this time we were told we had to get the current owner to extend the freehold lease as it was too low. (another thing the estate agent had neglected to tell us)
We knew the property would require work but we had no idea how much was really needed. The previous owner was a bit of a bodger so we have had a massive headache dealing with what he left behind.
-His boiler had broken THREE years ago but didn't bother to get it fixed so he just left it. - this was great for introducing damp to the old walls, we had damp present in 4 of the rooms in the property.
-He had the meter taken off and started running a monthly guesstimate charge. (the opposite way to save money, unless he bottled his water and sold it)
-All of the sockets in the house were spurred off of one double socket in the kitchen. Im amazed the property hadn't burned down.
-He had only left us 3 lightbulbs in the house, but im sure thats how he lived.
-The kitchen was unusable and nothing worked. I dont know how he lived/survived in there. all of the doors were bowed the appliances were deadly. The oven door was permanently open too.
-He was a heavy smoker, the house stunk and all the walls/furniture was yellow. Even more of a reason for a complete gut.
We knew we were going strip the kitchen out but we weren't looking forward to buying a new one. Luckily around a week before our moving date we had actually found a secondhand kitchen on eBay which we were at a loose end as if we were going to put a bid on. I messaged the guy to ask a few questions but later passed and didn't bid. After a few days of the auction finishing we had a phone call from the guy offering the kitchen to us for free if we could pick it up. Obviously we jumped at the chance, rented a luton from our local dealer and drove a hour into Croydon to find the address. After a small talk with the person who popped the kitchen onto eBay we found out it wasn't his house but he was a builder for them hoping to make some money on the side. We were going to chuck them a bit of money but we thought they were a little rude and had found that the half of the kitchen doors had bowed due to being stored in a damp garage for a while. (that wasn't listed on the eBay auction).
This was all stored at the in-laws while we waited for the completion day. Needless to say neither me or my father in-law were looking forward to moving this again in a weeks time.
We just sold our first property at £8000 more than what we bought the new property for. While making a £49,000 profit after two years of living there. House prices in our area are extortionate for what they are. But we are right next to Gatwick airport so its expected. In order to move up in the property ladder/game we had to buy a pretty run down property and do it up if we were going to make money on this one too.
I managed to get permission to build a floating wall in the first property with LED lighting surrounding after many months of scouring the AV forums a few years ago.
***old house floating wall***
We were running...
-42" LG TV,
-PS4/PS3 streaming Netflix etc
-A couple of networked 3TB drives with all our movies and content connected with our Macs, iPhones and iPad etc.
-Apple airport Expresses connected to multiple speakers around the home.
-A crap 60W sound bar from Tescos/replaced with my old 2.1 Hifi set up when the sound bar went bang.
I am interested in running some form of CCTV in the new home too.
I was hoping to use these in the new property but all connected in some form of AV/Server rack in a cupboard somewhere. (I may need a little help from the forums looking for ideas on that one).
This property was a old hunting lodge that had been converted 20+ years ago from what we had been told. it took 6 months for the sale to go through we were right on the edge of having to renegotiate a new mortgage offer which wouldn't of been ideal as the wife was now considering staying off work to look after the little one. so we wouldn't of had as good of a deal as we currently had. in this time we were told we had to get the current owner to extend the freehold lease as it was too low. (another thing the estate agent had neglected to tell us)
We knew the property would require work but we had no idea how much was really needed. The previous owner was a bit of a bodger so we have had a massive headache dealing with what he left behind.
-His boiler had broken THREE years ago but didn't bother to get it fixed so he just left it. - this was great for introducing damp to the old walls, we had damp present in 4 of the rooms in the property.
-He had the meter taken off and started running a monthly guesstimate charge. (the opposite way to save money, unless he bottled his water and sold it)
-All of the sockets in the house were spurred off of one double socket in the kitchen. Im amazed the property hadn't burned down.
-He had only left us 3 lightbulbs in the house, but im sure thats how he lived.
-The kitchen was unusable and nothing worked. I dont know how he lived/survived in there. all of the doors were bowed the appliances were deadly. The oven door was permanently open too.
-He was a heavy smoker, the house stunk and all the walls/furniture was yellow. Even more of a reason for a complete gut.
We knew we were going strip the kitchen out but we weren't looking forward to buying a new one. Luckily around a week before our moving date we had actually found a secondhand kitchen on eBay which we were at a loose end as if we were going to put a bid on. I messaged the guy to ask a few questions but later passed and didn't bid. After a few days of the auction finishing we had a phone call from the guy offering the kitchen to us for free if we could pick it up. Obviously we jumped at the chance, rented a luton from our local dealer and drove a hour into Croydon to find the address. After a small talk with the person who popped the kitchen onto eBay we found out it wasn't his house but he was a builder for them hoping to make some money on the side. We were going to chuck them a bit of money but we thought they were a little rude and had found that the half of the kitchen doors had bowed due to being stored in a damp garage for a while. (that wasn't listed on the eBay auction).
This was all stored at the in-laws while we waited for the completion day. Needless to say neither me or my father in-law were looking forward to moving this again in a weeks time.
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