Tea and sympathy thread - whinge about your home without asking for advice

[KievLoverTwo]

Roll up, roll up. Sit in a comfy patio chair and help yourself to tea and scones. Due to political divides, it's deconstructed, so you can choose if jam or cream goes first. Gluten free scones are also available.

This is a place to whinge. Get it all off your chest.

Feedback and constructive advice is not necessary, but if you would like it, feel free to ask.

I will begin.

I don't want any advice because I rent and I am very limited with the number of f**ks I can be bothered to give in my rental after so many problems; it's a Tesco value house dressed up as a very fancy new farmhouse and it never ceases to go wrong.

Can't remember the last time I tried Tesco Value, so don't hold that against me.

I will begin.

On Monday a farmer took down the phone line and we now have no internet. I live on a farm. My landlady chose not to tell me, even though she knows my other half makes his living working from home, relying on the internet. I should probably add we are 100 metres from it and she is back and forth all the time and extremely responsive to most things I tell her about. There has been a silage run since Sunday and clearly a tractor has taken it out (muddy, slippery and wet), but she decided, for whatever reason, that it didn't warrant warning us about. That line supplies us and them and no one else.

The ensuite bathroom literally smells like a sewer and has done for a few months. Trying to problem fix is not working. Sometimes it gets so bad that it smells on half of the floor.

Again with silage, she had the courtesy to call me this time because the time before last I completely lost my shit when it got to 6am - the silage run with trucks over a speed bump kept my OH awake til 3.30am two nights this week. She asks them to slow down over the speed bump but the thumps still thump. We are quite reasonable, we have only requested they slow down over midnight. It seems most of their tractor and truck combos cannot or will not do it.

The time before this with the overnight silage run, my OH lost his diplomacy with a work colleague and the following day was sacked from a project and told there is now very little hope of him being promoted this year. Worthy of noting is he is autistic and doesn't communicate all that well, sleeps terribly when there are disturbances, but this 'we will promote you' has been going on for a considerable amount of time before they decided to cut him off after he was too direct with a colleague. I don't think he was outrageous, but American culture is very different to ours. I am convinced it's the constant stress of the home we are in that causes anxiety spikes which is holding his career back.

This morning I woke up to the OH slamming all the things because the heating and HW broke. She sent her man round (kudos, within 2.5 hours) but he doesn't know what caused it, he tested the two blown fuses but has no idea what caused it. This is the guy who installed the electrics when the houses was built. Everything goes wrong with this house. That he didn't know what is causing it is far from a suprise because all of the utilities infrastructure is absolutely shit. Which he partly installed.

We have been together five years and been through some absolutely horrific rows that I would truly cringe at if I was a fly on a wall. I have never seen him as angry as he was when he told me about the heating and HW this morning. Genuinely thought he was going to put his fist through the wall, usually that's my schtick, so it was quite shocking to witness that.

We've been slowly building up covering all parts of the houses with various blocking things because we have a constant plague of flies. Today it failed and we had a house full of them again. They get in through window cracks, extractors, sink overflows - it's so fucking tiresome. Don't even think about telling me 'they'll be gone in winter' - the only fly free month we had last year was January, and I think that was more like 2-3 weeks.

I could go on but I think that's enough for now.

We moved to a farm because we had literally no other choice last year. It's not as though I thought it would be all sweetness and bird song and had no idea what it would involve. I certainly didn't expect every flying thing to get in with every window and door closed or the constant... just.. constant shit.

Did I mention we have a silage (shit pit) 100m away? Funny they never mentioned that at the viewing. It's 40/60 whether the house and area will smell like a toilet, all year round.

Rant done.

Your turn.

You have my sympathies everyone, am now on the last bathroom of a 3 year renovation project which we've lived in for the full time we've been doing the work as there's no way we could have afforded to do it and rent. Am hoping with the extra valves we're adding and changes to the plumbing that it will no longer be a 50/50 chance of us waking up to a bedroom that smells like poo.

In the early 10s I rented a house which was one of a pair of newbuild semis which sounds like it was built to exactly the same standards as yours @KievLoverTwo . We had constant issues with plumbing especially the toilets, two of which were the built in kind which they'd fully tiled in so they kept putting off fixing them as they couldn't get to the cisterns without having to retile or rebuild afterwards. That was just one of many issues which the landlord would just turn up without telling us he'd come to fix then start, leave things half done then turn up again unannounced and let himself in when I was on mat leave with my new born.

Still as bad as that was the people next door had bought their house and they had similar amounts of problems to us and they (the builder who was also our landlord) wouldn't do anything about their issues as they "weren't structural". I still remember when the next door wife and I were both leaving for the train at the same time, her shouting to her husband in a proper sing song, edge of insanity voice "doorbell's fallen off". My dh and I still use that as shorthand for something's gone to absolute sh*t but we do count our blessings because there's every possibility we would have bought instead of rented that house it if we could have afforded it at the time.

Indeed, the stairs aren't ideal but we've dealt with them fine for 9 years now.

You're right about that viewer, she's not found anywhere else to buy in the last year so wants another look.

Oh yes I forgot to say in my first post, my front door has been jammed shut since yesterday. The handle moves but it's not opening, nor is it locking. We've been coming in and out the back door since then. Got no viewers coming today thankfully!

You definitely dodged a bullet there.

Tbh this is the second 10 to 11 yo place we have lived in and it seems to be that time when all the electronics and hardware go. When we moved into a flat they had to replace a ton of hardware. Structurally it was fabulous though, we never even heard a neighbour and there wasn't a crack to be seen anywhere.

I think our current house would be a bit less irritating if it didn't look so fancy but go wrong so very often.

And if really stupid decisions had not been made, e.g. thermostats that can only be forced to move with fingernails, placing them on external walls in an area that regularly gets 45mph winds so wall gets cold and your heating behaves like a furnace, those silly little things that just annoy on a daily basis.

I would be extremely reluctant to buy a 10 yo house in the future. I would rather get an older one that some other sod has already had to deal with.

I hope your current home is better!

@ThePlantKiller arghhhh menace door

We have to use brut force on the handle of ours to shut it, apparently it has dropped so much it cannot be fixed

Well, I hope she buys it.

I am so sorry about your mortgage. Is the heating broken or unaffordable?

Unaffordable at present @KievLoverTwo

We just don't want to take on any new big expense while the economy is so borked.

The insurances have all gone up significantly on top of everything else, and who knows?

The Tories could do something else mental like start charging for services that we used to get included in Council Tax or something else that puts up our bills even further.

@verdantverdure absolutely, you are being sensible. The IMF have said today the war in Israel is going to push oil prices up, so everyone can expect more expensive gas, electricity and petrol in the future.

For anyone reading this who are scared, Octopus replied to me the other day and offered me a 12 month deal. I haven't looked at the numbers because internetting off my phone, but whatever it is, I will now take it.

I looked three weeks ago and there was nothing on their website. They were replying to a pricing problem I had and then sent a link to a deal.

KPMG have also said wage increases are slowing.

I really think we are going to see a global recession within 12 months so wherever folks can be prudent and frugal would be great.

There were already 200,000 UK reduncacies between May and July.

I am sorry to be the grim reaper :(

Btw I had to move out of a freezing house in July 22 when oil went from 45p to £1.30 a litre (it was on oil and was then gonna cost over 1200 pm to heat in winter). We found that keeping necks, ankles and feet warm was the best way to protect against extreme cold.

Wishing you all the best, and sending warm hugs your way.

Yes that's the thing, ticking along ok now is a whole different ballgame if one of us loses our job. (We have employment insurance but it's not enough to cover our current bills by a ling chalk.)

Thanks @KievLoverTwo

I'm just repressing a little shudder at cold ankles.

I plan to get all the sofa blankets neck warmers and fleeces etc out this weekend.

We're hardy, we'll be ok.

@verdantverdure it's crap, but living off ready meals that can be cooked quickly that don't necessitate having the downstairs heating on saved us that winter because my kitchen was literally unbearable. It was an old house so indoors was 0.5 degrees warmer than outdoors.

I actually found a few companies recently who will send you 'fresh' but really pretty healthy microwave meals that contain decent veg! When you cost up the amount of meat they put in them (one of them is LOADS), they work out far cheaper (and tastier) than supermarket ready meals. They even have GF options!!

We spent most of our evenings watching telly in bed underneath the duvet that winter.

I was going to whinge about stepping on an unopened Macdonald's ketchup pot which then exploded, sending ketchup up the hall walls like a scene from Carrie.

Which, despite cleaning, now look horrendous and need repainting.

But, having read everyone else's woes, it feels like nothing.

@BlackCatsAreBrilliant all complaints are valid!

Get some mustard and some pesto, repeat the process, et voila, you have yourself a home-made Jackson Pollock.

My understairs cupboard is a bastard.
The door is too small I can only go in sideways. Once I’m in I can’t stand up properly. Only built in cupboard in the house. I avoid hoovering cos that’s where it’s kept.

@Autumn1990 That sounds really freaky, waking up to find the jackdaw/vultures sitting on your wardrobe. It reminds me of when I lived in an old place where the bedroom was up in the roof space. It was tiny with a velux window on the roof, positioned over the bed. Often on a morning I would wake up to see any number of crows/jackdaws etc sitting around the window staring in at me!

My first flat was a basement flat in a Victorian conversion and had obviously been converted before building regs were a thing. I had a couple upstairs and they weren't particularly noisy but I felt as though I literally lived with them. If they had sex (their bedroom was above mine) I had to go and read in the sitting room till they were done. They also let the grouting deteriorate and it collapsed my bathroom ceiling. It also had both a fox problem and a damp problem and no TV aerial (this was before broadband so you needed terrestrial or cable). It had been empty for a while and a local tramp had taken to sleeping in the front garden and took some persuading not to. Luckily for me I sold it into a hot market where any old shit would sell. The guy I sold it to ended up getting together with the girl upstairs (who by then had split with her bf) and they then agreed with the other flat owner to extend the whole building massively. He made loads of money and got a wife so I don't feel bad about selling him a damp noisy fox hostel.

Current issues include

• terrible wifi which is a whole area problem and cant be fixed unless they decide to upgrade the cabling.
• Constant bad drains in downstairs "toilet cupboard". I am on first name terms with the drain flushing company.
• Boiler keeps depressurising so clearly there's a leak but I'm too scared to investigate.
• Shower sometimes turns itself on in middle of night
• Bamboo- fucking hate that stuff.
• Foxes (AGAIN).
• Gutters are a massive PITA- constantly blocked by pine crap. Cant cut down tree due to TPOs.

@Sparehair that's quite a list you have got there, Christ.

Your shower would scare the crap out of me. Have you tried holy water?

Dodgy electrics?

They also let the grouting deteriorate and it collapsed my bathroom ceiling

How does that cause that?!

basically the bath/ Shower over bath isn't sealed so water went down the wall, soaked into their floorboards and over time it soaked my ceiling and it collapsed

I think it's probably the valve because if you just turn it off and on again it stops.

1960s decent size box semi. "Renovated" (I use to term loosely) about 3 years before we moved in. So that's 15 years ago now.

Stairs and landing carpet is knackered. Threadbare on stair treads. Stairs and landing need painting but not before the cracked ceiling from the boarded loft are tackled, and the crap electrics fixed which mean half the spotlights in the ceilings don't work. Apparently wiring isn't up to spec to support the lights.

Just spent £ getting patio sorted as that was lifting up and the moss cleared from gutters and downpipes. And fixing bits of roof and chimney stack.

Windows upstairs are old and leaky, downstairs ones have started to be cloudy and sons bedroom gets mould above the window which I fear is a leaky roof.

I don't know where to start. Well, it needs to be with a lottery win TBH. Either that or I have to return to teaching and my old SLT level role to afford it all.

My tale of woe - nowhere near as bad as most on here but I'm into week 7 now with no end in sight.
In Spring this year we spoke with the local builder - nice chap, 50 + years experience - about some pointing that was missing around various places but mainly the bathroom window, resulting in damp in the bathroom. He suggested that, rather than patch up here and there, that we have the whole house re pointed. Leave it to me he said.
So, we waited - and waited - and waited, through April, May, June, July and part of August for him to arrive with the scaffolding. Eventually, near to the bank holiday it arrived. Hurrahh!

Apart from one day when he had help with the grinding out of the old mortar at the top of the gable end, our builder has worked solo. The windows look like they've been sandblasted (and we can't have them open otherwise the dust blows in), the garden also! There's scaffolding everywhere, heaps of grit piled along the path around the house along the fences, gates, hedges and any other related space you can think of.

He's doing a great job, but oh so slow, though he is in his 70's. However, he turns up every day the weather is dry, never stops for a brew, disappears off the job only to let his little dog out for 5 mins, doesn't have music blasting away, and always has a smile on his face.

I tried to pin him down to a timescale earlier this week, and his answer? "it'll be done when it's done lass" . That told me didn't it!

Snap!

So I have a slim wardrobe in the hall for mops and brooms gubbins.

As shopping lists go, this one is not my favourite.

I would start with a dehumidifier for son's room to see if it improves.

Long term mould exposure gave me M.E. and I have been sick for seven years, so I take it a lot more seriously these days.

Wishing you luck with all your jobs :(

@IHearTheMermaidsSinging your builder sounds brilliant, haha. Northern?