When we purchased our house I don’t think we really thought about the work that needed doing to it. I was excited about this lovely 4 bedroom Victorian house that was a ‘fixer upper’. John wanted a new build. He didn’t get it.
Our poor house has had a couple of careless owners in the past. The original Victorian hallway floor has been sanded and the pattern ruined. The kitchen cupboards have been painted with WHITE EMULSION. That deserved capitals. Who does that? Not only were the cupboards painted in emulsion but also over every light switch and plug socket in the house it would seem. There is no way the previous owners did anything to this house in a safe manner. It has left us with a lot of work to do!
A couple of months back we had a bit of a disaster and part of our coving fell down in the dining room/ library. There is still a massive hole because we haven’t got it fixed yet. We have bits of debris falling out now and again and things like this make me wonder how safe I would be to fix something like this myself.
Slater and Gordon have some really interesting facts about DIY and how safe we are when doing it. Some of the figures are really quite shocking and some I found quite funny!
I wouldn’t say that either me or John are particularly good at DIY. However, I would certainly be a lot more willing to try to do something compared to John. I like painting and I have upcycled a couple of chests of drawers in the past. John gets flat pack furniture wrong. The stats about the difference between men and women was quite funny for me because I think they’d be the other way around in our house! I do draw the line at anything to do with electrics or plumbing though. I’d probably blow myself up.
Something I was really interested in reading about was asbestos. Although it is something I had heard about I never really knew much about it; I certainly didn’t know anything about mesothelioma. 61% of the people asked in the survey didn’t know what it was either so at least I’m not alone! What’s even worse though is that so many of us haven’t had a survey done on our homes to check for asbestos. If you have been in contact with asbestos then Slater and Gordon could help you with mesothelioma compensation.
Disclaimer: This post is in collaboration with Slater and Gordon. All opinions are our own.