Bid on a house today.

[auld argonian]

After 20 years of wrestling with the problems of a 1913 house designed by a notable Prairie School architect, I fall back on the title of a book written by the comedian, Alan King:

Anybody Who Owns His Own House Deserves It!

...and it is NOT meant as encouragement...

But it is a great thing to do...you will NEVER have to worry about what to do with any spare time that you might find you have on your hands.

My first advice: kill the lawn and plant a dry garden.

Really.

We have a guy around here that I affectionately refer to as "The Rock Man" who lives on a block full of verdant, perfect lawns with poodle-bush evergreens and he has a yard covered with stones and driftwood. He is my hero.

Seriously, though, best of luck on it.

Best

AA

[artificer]

Anybody Who Owns His Own House Deserves It!

...and it is NOT meant as encouragement...

AA

Too true!
I own a flat roofed house that was designed by a local architectural firm in homage to the Frank Lloyd Wright's Usonian school of design.

There are some seriously weird touches in the way some of the systems were designed.

When I first had the duct-work cleaned, I actually had to explain the system to the managing cleaner. He told me that my HVAC was the d@mnedest thing he'd ever seen, and he'd been cleaning furnaces and ducts for almost 30 years!

[Mike_Oettle]

Auld Argonian wrote: “My first advice: kill the lawn and plant a dry garden.”

Whether you need to kill the lawn will depend on where you are.
There are many dry parts of South Africa (as there are also dry parts of the US) where using the amount of water required to grow a lawn for that purpose is a criminal waste.
In my case (and living at the coast), I found that using indigenous grasses worked because they require less water (once established) than the commonly used variety (which happens to be an alien invader from Kenya).
I also deliberately did not plant flowers, bushes and shrubs that needed constant watering. Here again, planting indigenous meant having hardy vegetation that survived the dry spells.
My wife happens to be fond of water-thirsty plants like English honeysuckles and roses. She holds a grudge against me that ours died. But it was the climate that was unsuited to them. I told her that in the first place.
Regards,
Mike

[Pleater]

Back in 1981 my husband was one of just 3 employees who was asked to move here when the firm he worked for decided to close one of its two operations.

I set off on my motorbike to look for houses - saw some really awful ones, and then I spotted some estate agents I had not visited and as all the parking in front of their shops was full I pulled in around the corner, and there was this house for sale.

It was down at the end of the street - but it caught my attention at once. It is a Victorian red brick villa - a high tiled roof, conservatory at the back on the south side, three bedrooms, and from one you can just see Poole harbour and the Purbeck hills.

I saw it was for sale and thought I could never afford it.

Next time I visited the agent who had been working hardest for me said 'we just got instructions on a property I think will suit you' and brought me here.

The same day we had an offer to buy our house.

We have had some windows replaced, the wall cavity insulated (it has double brick walls with a space between) and had the edge of the roof enclosed in plastic. We needed the roof repaired a couple of times - you don't get a view without being high up, and this is the top of the ridge, but we are just far enough back from the exposed side not to suffer much damage, even in hurricanes, and we are insured anyway. We insulated the roof and put down a floor, made the conservatory more substantial, replaced the central heating boiler once, but have not had much expense really, in thirty years. We will get around to doing the new kitchen and flooring sometime, I expect. From time to time I make up a cabinet from the stack of flat packs and shuffle things around to fit it in.

OK - the drain from the sinks blocked up and flooded the conservatory the other day, so I had to poke the cleaner down it until it cleared - messy but not really a problem.

It is a happy house and for the 24,500 pounds we paid for it I don't think we could have done better.

Anne the Pleater :ootd:

[Drac]

We have a guy around here that I affectionately refer to as "The Rock Man" who lives on a block full of verdant, perfect lawns with poodle-bush evergreens and he has a yard covered with stones and driftwood. He is my hero.

We have a neighbor by us that has that with white stones. The heat of the sun on the rocks kills all the weeds so even less work.

Jim