I’ve always enjoyed this thread so please keep it going as you carry on with the inside. From what I can see, it looks like you are doing a really good and thorough job!

RD – I think they have two locks. Usually have butty Bach, and a few from church end and church farm breweries which are pretty good too.

Second RD suggestion of the wild boar, I used to live a few doors away, it is excellent.

The cape of good hope in Warwick (next to the canal) is also a good down to earth pub with decent ales and food too.

If you want a curry then Warwick spice is excellent, if castle Balti has reopened then it is a great ‘spit and sawdust’ curry house, with massive naan breads :-)

For those of you using the likes of gmail for hosting, do you have any requirements from clients regarding where their confidential information is stored?

This seems to be a stumbling block for my employer, but I can’t help but think that companies other than us also keep confidential client data

Nice work, looks really great. How’s the house coming along?

Check out moneysavingexpert, but I believe the post office card is the best deal around at the moment

Flashy

It’s the Sony htct380. Link to JL is below….

John Lewis Sony Soundbar

Recently got a Sony soundbar from John Lewis for £200. Has a wireless sub which you just plug into the mains anywhere in the room and it auto syncs. Has hdmi which means that i can use the tv remote to control it, which was one of the main reasons I chose this over other soundbars!

The whole thing is very much fit and forget.

Malvern rider… Not much better than a pint of bathams with a packet of either walkers smokey bacon or roast chicken crisps :-)

You might find that going east of Leamington towards southam is cheaper rent wise, but essentially the countryside around Warwick and Leamington isn’t cheap!

Oh you could also look at wellesbourne too.

You’d have to make some assumptions regarding the torque curve of the engine. Peak power only refers to one operating point of the engine which you don’t operate at constantly during a 0-60 sprint

458 out of that lot will be the nicest and easiest to drive if she has no experience of driving that type of car before.

Have you considered a skoda estate instead?

People love to chip away and set a new low standard, and install a culture of working late. It’s not easy to resist initially, but once you do, you’ll have done yourself a favour.

This thread will keep going until everyone on the internet is wrong

The OP also mentions putting in an en suite so the question clearly isn’t related entirely to cabling thoughts.

Anyway, I don’t want to derail the thread as some interesting suggestions may pop up, it was just an observation

If I were building a house from scratch I’d aim to have an access panel to allow me to isolate individual radiators, water supply to boiler, taps etc. It might be overkill but would be very handy and give peace of mind with regards to isolating leaks.

Other things which make a house easier to live in… Proper cloakroom to store coats, shoes, bags etc. Utility room etc.

I’m surprised at how much people are bothered about cabling and not proper house ‘features’

Really? One thing that is probably stopping me just getting on with it and getting into brewing is the fear that what I brew might be a bit crap. I can tell the difference between a good and bad ale in the pub, but how realistic is it to be able to get to the level of quality of when you have a reaally good pint in a pub?

Without knowing the exact layout of the gearbox/shifter mechanism, my first guess would be a bearing that is failing. I have also heard that Vauxhall have issues with bearing failures on the Astra, would be worth doing some more research. What kind of noise is it that you can hear?

As above, the offers with free coffee are good. Beware that the £75 free is 3x £25 vouchers, and it’s something like £60 min spend for free delivery, so you end up using the vouchers on 3 seperate purchases. Still not bad value though.

There are loads of unused machines on eBay where people buy them for the free coffee and sell the machines to unsuspecting folk who just see the cheaper list price than the shop, but don’t consider the free coffee vouchers.

I keep thinking I should get one of these but I really want it to be fit and forget and out of sight of the driver. How do you all get on with yours in this respect?

I agree… Doesn’t sound like somebody who has been keen to maintain the car very well

Back to original question… You can often get better value looking at larger cars. I was recently looking at getting a focus estate, but it turns out that the mondeo has better specs (cruise as standard for example), and the prices are comparable.

I think that you see it in all walks of life though. Several very well paid people where I work are notorious for grabbing free stuff just because they can, giving no consideration to the idea that other people who perhaps don’t earn as much or might benefit from it more are losing an opportunity as a result of their behaviour.

To get heated windscreen which is excellent, I believe that ford did a winter pack (or somesuch).
It may have been standard on ghia but don’t rule out other cars on the basis of that. Mine is the zetec and the only thing I would like that the ghia has is the centre armrest.

Btw, it’s easy to replace the head unit if you want dab/Bluetooth, I replaced mine when the cd changer started playing up.

I bought an 04 plate 1.6 petrol mk1 6.5 years ago. It had 38k at the time and has now done 127k.

It’s a great car, handles and rides well, the 1.6 is fine if you can look beyond the end of your bonnet and judge traffic, and has been cheap to run and repair. I’ll be reluctantly selling mine in a couple of months, can’t imagine getting more than £700-800 for it.

Ta much

I don’t think you can access via safari but I would have to check

I can output my laptop into the tv via hdmi, so sky blocking it is a bit daft really

I should have also said that sky go app also blocks chromecast, and sky go won’t run in chrome on the laptop (silver light support is the issue I believe)

We have the recently outdated Apple TV. I have found that AirPlay has become quite sketchy recently, whereas the chromecast that we also have is much more reliable for mirroring from my iPhone or iPad.

The main advantage for me of the Apple TV is that you can buy or rent films via iTunes on it. If it wasn’t for that, I would sell it and just use the chromecast.

To answer the question above, you can AirPlay most things, but not everything. The sky go app blocks AirPlay.

Whilst I agree that a lot of people aged 20-30 do have the latest gadget, flash cars etc, I do wonder how much this is because they see the prospect of buying a house totally unachievable, so spend their money elsewhere. The reality is that it is possible, if you have a good income and don’t have all of the latest cars/gadgets/clothes, but for those who don’t have a decent income it really is impossible.

FWIW I scrimped in my mid/early twenties to get a deposit together, and having bought a house I still don’t have flash cars, and we are putting up with the dodgy decor of our house until I have the time and money to do the work myself. A lot of my peers ‘wouldn’t stand’ having older cars/dodgy decor in their house, and would just throw (borrowed) cash at it.

Have a look on trade radiators website. I’ve bought a couple from there, they seem good to me and there are tables of all the heat outputs for each radiator they sell

Cheers

OP – you post a lot about issues relating to housing, specifically high prices and buy to let landlords. I completely sympathise with your situation – I also believe that prices are too high and that it has a detrimental effect on almost every aspect of our society.

What I also think though is that it is not good for you to spend so much time considering these issues and getting wound up over them. I recall seeing a post on here a year or two ago where somebody sympathised with you but said that they had spent a lot of time looking at the HPC website, and came to the realisation it was just adding to their frustration and stress. I can’t find the post now after 10 mins of googling, but I remember at the time that I thought that the post also applied to me. I’ve since not bothered looking at that website and the negativity surround all these issues soon subsided.

My recommendation to you would be to just chill out a bit and not spend so much time thinking about these issues and just get on with your life. That might mean buying a house, or it might mean commiting to renting long term, but just make a decision and spend your time more effectively and positively. Unfortunately all the issues surrounding our society of the haves and the have nots aren’t going away, life just isn’t fair and I don’t suppose it ever has been. But at the rate you are going you’ll spend your entire life stressing over housing and spending energy hating landlords and estate agents. It’s just not worth it.

For your current situation, figure out your budget and find a flat within that. If 850 is your budget then maybe the flat in question just isn’t going to happen. I’m afraid the landlady doesn’t owe you a thing and vice versa, the sooner you accept that, the better it will be for you

I hope you take this post in the manner it is meant, I sympathise with your posts and you seem like a nice guy, but I think you need to accept the status quo and get on with enjoying your life.

Last time I looked they were offering about 15p a cd, which put me off as I thought £45 for 300 odd CDs was a bit rubbish. If they are offering £1 a cd though, then that may change my mind.

Definitely pricey. We had more or less exactly the same install as your first quote in March this year, but with the 42Cdi boiler, all in for £2700. Based in West Midlands.

Just another example of the right wing press bashing the NHS and medical staff so they can harness public support for cuts/privatisation/insert self interest here.

Was the house a repo?

I would leave the room size as it is and replace the corner bath with a conventional bath with a shower attached.

The entire front of our house was covered in it, up to 1/2m deep. I just began pulling it and it pretty much came off as one big sheet of ivy. I then spent the next day doing 6 trips to the tip, each with a car full of ivy.

Not particularly characterful, but the premier inn in Warwick is close and within walking distance. If you stay there, the Cape of Good Hope pub is 2 mins away down the canal towpath and does excellent beer and food

MicArms – that’s great, thanks. I’m based in Redditch and grew up around Bromsgrove so I know Upton warren well. This thread got me googling and I’ve also found that you can swim at ragley hall on Tuesday/Sunday so will have to give one a go.

Cheers

@MicArms – where did you try it out? I believe you are Stourbridge/Clent based aren’t you?

Cheers