soyamocha3

They have been working next door for six months. No safety, poor workmanship, never keep to a schedule or agreement, second rate work - pictures and correspondence to back this up if you require it. Just ask. There is a website Plus Rooms Disasters but they took it down but you can still see some of the last review. Makes for interesting reading

If anyone is considering using this firm and wants to see photographs of their work and their method of work please do not hesitate to contact me by DM

Our neighbours are using them. The loft started at the beginning of October and the windows only went in last week. It has been a slow job. Work has now stopped to the side extension just a few days after it started because Plus Rooms did not bother to do a proper survey. Despite there being a rodding eye outside the property, they did not discover that a sewer pipe runs along the fence, where they wish to erect a wall for a side return. The pipe is still sitting there (for over a week now) in the ditch they dug waiting for a decision on how best to proceed. Tte workmen are from Romania and turn up in an unmarked white van. They are quite happy to work until 7pm in the week and over the allowed hours on Saturday - even when asked they continue to do so. A wall to the neighbouring property has been left exposed by them since the beginning of December. The neighbour cannot see it from their property and I do not want to get involved so have not mentioned it to them. The project manager for this major project has been with them for over 3 years and prior to that was a marketing manager for Renault. Rather concerning when you consider how major some of the work they undertake is. Although we have a Party Wall Award, they have ignored most of the clauses in it and basically do what they what. They even failed to give us notice when they wanted to put scaffolding on our land and the first we knew of it was when we went outside and they were erecting scaffolding right over out heads. Good luck to you if you use them and heaven help your neighbours

Her poor neighbours. Currently living through a similar nightmare.

I have a Yaris nothing special and rather old too

I am so sorry to hear about this. It is just too much of a coincidence that there has been a spate recently of things being taken from locked cars - or possibly unlocked.

What a lovely, sad and moving post

I am just around the corner from you and I too left my car unlocked by mistake. My handy phone charger was taken along with a lovely picnic blanket I had won in a competition. They even took my old shopping bags - probably to put their ill gotten gains in. They just cannot walk past an unlocked car without pinching something.

We had one taken from outside too. They shimmied it up the post (Disabled Bay Post) and lifted it over the disabled notices - must have been tall thieves! I now keep my bike in the house - blinkin inconvenient but not as inconvenient as no bike!!

Thank you so much to everyone for all this really useful information. Everything updates so fast and it has been a few years since I have been on the market looking for a laptop. I have an Ipad Air and use a Logitech keyboard too by the way - seems a few people have gone up this route. I also have an Ipod that has all the apps etc on so I am not short on gadgets :) With all this advice I am well equipped so thanks so much.

I need a new laptop. My current Sony Vaio is very old now and I have had quite a few problems with it in the past, so want to buy something else. I only want it for sending emails, storing photographs, booking holidays, youtube and generally looking up various things and so I don't really need to buy one of those ?1000 Mac jobs - that look fabulous by the way. Can anyone recommend a laptop. I have been looking on the John Lewis site and some of the less known brands do not always have fabulous reviews. Thank you

In certain Boroughs (say Westminster) when you apply for a Disabled Bay outside your home it is given a number that relates to your particular bay and you receive a matching permit with your allocated number. Anyone other than you (even if they have a disabled badge) will receive a ticket for parking in your bay. Southwark do not use this system. In order to get a bay outside your home you have to be receiving the higher rate of disability entitlement and despite going to all the trouble of completing the form to get the bay etc. anyone who has a Blue Badge can use it if your car is not parked in the bay. Southwark write to people who have disabled bays outside there home every few years to check whether the bay is required or not. If you do not confirm that it is still required the bay will be removed. I have a bay outside my house and get letters from Southwark every now and again asking if it is still required.

I have been extremely grateful for all the advice given on here. I have responded to all the help offered and thanked people for their help. We have found someone who comes highly recommended to assist us with a Party Wall Award when one is required. In the meantime we are waiting to hear what the exact proposals are. We have never experienced such extensive building in such a close proximity before and my initial post was just to get some advice from people who have been there and perhaps could point in the right direction or provide some useful tips and indeed we have been given many so thank you. Our houses are very close together. We recently went to visit someone who kindly offered to let us see the wrap around extension their neighbours erected. The wall certainly is "in your face" and looks very unnatural. This particular house had the benefit of having a bigger space between the houses, so our wall is likely to look much worse and the proximity be much closer to our kitchen window and door. The house we visited also benefits from patio windows to the garden, whereas we only have a very small window in the kitchen overlooking the garden. We will be experiencing a substantial amount of loss of light and also in the rear of our living room. The second bedroom and bathroom will also lose light from the loft conversion. Once I have more news I will definitely update the post. In the meantime I have thanked those who have taken the time to give advice and post some really useful information. Thank you ps In most cases I have contacted the person direct to thank them which in hindsight was not wise as it looks like I have not bothered. I was not sure if I thanked the person on here direct, whether they would see my thank you so send it to them directly.

Penguin68 Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > Building a relationship with the neighbours > (actually, more difficult if they are not to be > resident during the work) is key - together with a > clear understanding of what is to be done and a > discussion of any impact that might have on you. > > However one slight word of warning - a recent 'big > build' on my street led to the house (never > occupied by the 'owner'), at the end, being put on > the market immediately the work was done - so any > bridge building with the current owner was > completely wasted. The build, then was all about > leveraging value out of the property so that it > could be sold on for a profit - ?100k of work > lifted the price by ?300-?400k - that's what > developers do, of course, so you do probably need, > as much as you can, to find out whether you are > really getting the new neighbour you think you are > getting. This could well be the case.

Thank you very much for all this advice - it really has been very helpful.

To Worldwiser Thanks for that. We are not inclined to do the extension ourselves because we only put in a brand new kitchen last year. In addition, unlike our neighbours, we will be in occupation - they are living elsewhere, so you can imagine what having that work going on in our house would be like and living in the property. We cannot move elsewhere we have way too much stuff. The measurements on your planning permission are about what we would hope to negotiate. Unless the wall straddles our property, we will not be able to touch it, paint it, hang anything on it etc. We did try and console ourselves that we could paint it white and make is appear lighter but that would appear to be out of the question. The reason I would like my own surveyor is that he will be acting for me and me alone. When I call him, he will call me back first not the other party. Obviously I don't want them to hate me but I am not feeling the love for them right now. To be honest, we will have endure months of builders, noise, disruption, moving our three full sheds, paperwork, calls, emails, dirt, dust, lack of privacy, lack of security and possible damage because we have quite a old pipes in that area under the paving - all to eventually end up with a brick wall right outside our kitchen window and an additional 40cm of brick is quite a bit when it is directly in your face. If all they have to do is find ?1k, I don't think that is much to ask.

Red Devil Thank you very much. I do have the name of someone in mind and in fact have given them a call (waiting for them to call back) just to find out how to proceed once we have received formal notification. Thank you for much for all your advice. To say it has been helpful is an understatement. Thank you so very much indeed.

Thank you Sue - I am certainly getting that message and am currently looking for one. Thank you.

Thank you very much for your advice.

Thank you ALL so much for taking the trouble to come back with your recommendation and advice. I am really really grateful. We only found out yesterday and had quite a miserable evening and restless night worrying about it all. Thank you

Thank you very much for this help and advice and taking your time to assist.

Yes but just the boundary wall - which would have to be built - currently there is only a fence. So they will have to dig down for foundations and footings and there is currently paving stones which will have to be dug up. We have a dpc and there are old pipes under the paving and we already had a bad flood once when Thames Water started messing around at the front of the property. These are old houses and they don't take kindly to be knocked about. I can see our property being damaged and we keep it so nice too.

It is currently just with the builders but we have no experience and just want to make sure we know our rights and how to proceed with any discussion The work is going to be a nightmare for us but not much we can do about that. We are really more concerned with the height of the party wall being erected because there is only a small gap between our houses and it is going to feel very oppressive. We would like to have some control over the height of the wall - one of our main concerns. Thank you

Thank for for taking the time to reply. Yes we live in a Victorian terrace house (3 bedrooms upstairs - the usual set up. We are mid terrace and they are next door. Our kitchen doors (side dooors) are opposite and we have a fence separating the properties and garden. They intend to take down the wall between in the two living rooms, completion open up the kitchen and extend on the side and rear up to the party wall (in the case of the side). We are definitely going to have to have a Party Wall Award and I am aware of the Right of Light situation. I just wondered whether anyone had been through something similar and could offer any advice.

We are in a Victorian terraced house - mid terrace. When we open our kitchen door (side door) we are directly opposite their kitchen door. They want to remove the wall up to first floor level and extend out to the boundary and erect a wall where the fence is but it will be much higher.