on_the_hill

We contacted Andrew & Shaun when we are at our wit?s end following some very bad experiences with another roofer, and after finding that several other roofers were either unwilling to quote, or quoting us ruinous prices, to try to make good the shoddy work of the previous roofer. Andrew & Shaun quickly identified one cause of our problems and fixed it for very reasonable prices. And when that failed to mend the leak, they were quick to take responsibility, come out again and do some very impressive detective work to find the other cause, which again they fixed promptly and efficiently. After two years of trying and failing, they were the only people we?d found in the area capable of solving our problem, and at a price we could afford. Throughout, they have been friendly, professional and a pleasure to deal with. Highly recommended. They are father and son and take pride in their work, They always provided us with pictures of before and after repairs. Their contact details are: Tomlinson & son roofing 07984914445

I used a cocoon from the beginning and it was fine. However for the first 3 months my baby was in a sling as I found it easier while doing school runs. However if buggy was necessary, the cocoon was fine. Good luck!

Hi, Any recommendations for places to take a car to get allow wheels repaired? Light scratches, and small dent, but have to return the car and would like to hand it back in good condition. Thanks.

We would greatly recommend our cleaner Romero. He has been cleaning for us for several years, always with great care and attention to detail. Recently a couple of slots have come free in his week so he?d like to take on a house or two near us to make a day of coming to East Dulwich or Forest Hill. As well as being a cleaner, he is a very charming man, very gentle and solicitous with our children, and happens to be an accomplished samba dancer and choreographer when he?s not cleaning. His details are: 07986 968335, [email protected].

Hi, If you are looking for a cleaner, we would greatly recommend our cleaner Romero. He has been cleaning for us for several years, always with great care and attention to detail. Recently a couple of slots have come free in his week so he?d like to take on a house or two near us to make a day of coming to East Dulwich or Forest Hill. As well as being a cleaner, he is a very charming man, very gentle and solicitous with our children, and happens to be an accomplished samba dancer and choreographer when he?s not cleaning. His details are: 07986 968335, [email protected].

I have been trying to speak to Jeff for over a month now. He committed to coming to complete the work, and has let us down 3 times, due to staff being injured, then problems with his van. I have left 2 voicemails, 3 texts and 1 email in the last week and have sent him a link to this thread, with my comment above, but I've not had any of my calls returned. Jeff, this is another attempt to get you to call us back, we just want you to come and finish the work, we understand sometimes more than one visit is required to fix a problem and you've been trying to get it solved, so happy to have you back to try again, but please do not disappear on us. We have paid in full, but the leak is not solved and this process o trying to get you to come back is very very distressing. Happy to give feedback via PM if you are thinking of contacting Jeff.

At the moment I am waiting for resolution on the repairs Jeff has carried out for us and have not been effective. We reported this to Jeff over a month ago and I am awaiting response. Will update when I get a response.

Hi Fidgestsmum, Cannot offer much advice, watching with interest as we need similar childcare, moving off from au pair help, and trying to figure it out too.

Thank you all for the replies. I ended up not making it, as difficult to cater for children at different ages. Will try JAGS one of these weekends.

I would like to write a recommendation for Valdex. They have been excellent and can fully recommend them. I really appreciate the forum and often come here to look for tradesmen. We've had mixed experiences based on recommendations for builders and would like to share a good experience and give a bit of background on how we came across Valdex. Last year we used a company, which at the time was highly recommended here. We had a terrible time with them. They let us down and didn't finish the works. After this ordeal, we became a lot more careful when following recommendations, and a very kind fellow forum user allowed me to come to her house and see the work done by Valdex, as I wanted some reassurance the recommendation was sound. After seeing the standard of the works in her house, I contacted Valdex and the experience has been flawless, from first contact to finishing the works. Excellent communication, finished on time and within the budget. When we added extra works, a new quotation was generated and clearly explained and agreed. We had our attic insulated and boarded. Internal pipes re-routed and new wardrobes created, front door removed and replaced, we also had the timbers at the front of the house removed and new ones fitted. We needed some modifications to the frame for the vestibule door, which they very skilfully carried out in order to fit a new door. I highly recommend them and happy to receive PMs if you need further reassurance. Forgot to add their details: Valdex - 07793 540 306 [email protected]

Thanks a lot for the suggestion. We are looking for drop in sessions, rather than classes. Not sure if that exists as an option. Checked Jaggs and Crystal palace and they are lessons.

Hi, Looking for activities with the kids, and they are keen to go to do some trampolining. Are there any places like this in London? Thanks!

Comment on February: comment removed. Waiting resolution of problem. Will feedback later. Update on 14 June: problem still not resolved. Contact me if you are thinking of dealing with these guys.

Unfortunately we would not recommend Marvin. We've had a very mixed experience with him. He started off brilliantly, very polite and helpful, offering us suggestions about materials and design. We were due to start on a Friday and on Wednesday he e-mailed, not even called, letting us know our project had to be postponed because one of his men had had an accident. He had no idea when he could do the work. This we could understand, but after a few days of hearing nothing we started to chase for a new date for our project. After a few emails and calls he wrote to us with a tentatively date, 8 weeks after the original start date. By this point we have a bath, toilets, basins and doors laying around in our house, but even with this we were OK, but in that very e-mail with the new date, he announced he was to charge ?500 for protecting our floors and he was not to held responsible for any damages while moving materials in and out of the house. He offered to make good if there were any damages, but we were to pay for this. Even to this we replied offering to split the difference for protecting floors, since we felt it was unfair to spring into us this very last minute bill, plus it seem rather a lot. We also accepted his offer to charge us for making good of their own damages to our house when moving materials, but we suggested to set a cap on these repair costs, and anything over this he should take responsibility for. We heard nothing back. It has been 3 weeks since then. Just completely rude and unprofessional.

Hi supergolden88, I've has the same, I've been wondering. I had my BB over 6 months ago and the itchiness hasn't gone away. I loved the effect of the BB while it lasted, but wouldn't do it again. I suffer from asthma and I think the fumes were not very good for me as I had asthma and was sneezing for days after having the BB. It could have been something else, but wouldn't risk it, plus the itchiness is still there. If you find something to stop it please let me know!

Hello, Thank you Marianik, we bought a house in December and your post was most useful, we have almost finished and I would like to follow up your post in a similar format: We also did all the project management ourselves, and it meant we had to find the people to carry out the works. Here are the ones we went with: Plastering: Aaron 07773 410 661 and John McCann 07905 044912. Aaron did most of the work and John worked alongside him when I asked if he could speed up things a bit, so he got John involved as they sometimes work together. The final result was very good, and we had a few compliments about it from other tradesmen who were doing other works. Electrician: Shaun Owens 07974 943346. I knew Shawn from having used him before for minor repairs in our previous property, but this time we needed a full rewiring and he was amazing. Very professional and lovely to deal with. He is also very competitive with his prices. I wouldn't use any other electrician. Decorator/Painter: Eddie 07522 523415. Can only second what Marianik says. Eddie is very hard working and is so pleasant to have around. My toddler got very fond of him and was the first name he learnt! Eddie is very competitive with prices too and would work hard till the customer is happy. He has painted our whole house and done lots of extra bits like hanging lamps and tidying cables, etc. Plumber: Maurice Yeoman 07837 168978. Maurice rebuilt our downstairs loo and the final result was fantastic. Very tidy and professional. Floors: Steve 07949 411 650 I have left a couple of recommendations for Steve and Nicola from Back to Wood. Cannot recommend them highly enough. Our house got transformed by sanding the floorboards. They look amazing and there was no sign of dust at the end of the day. They were very patient when we were finding it difficult to decide what colour to use and they painted a few swatches for us, so we could make our mind up. He was even extremely helpful with advice when I messed up the stairs and he rescued me from the mistake I had made when I got the colour wrong. Carpenter and general repairs: Gary Strickland 07809 546 033. Gary is also very conscious and goes the extra mile to put things right, even fixing little things not related to his work. He has a can-do attitude and is not faced by any task. He put the skirting for the whole house up and hanged all doors, plus lots of extra work. Carpenter and Joiner: George Rochester 07984 230 531. George is a very dedicated carpenter. He did all the spindles in our stairs and was very professional when I expressed that I did not like the spacing. He re-did the whole lot and did not stop till we were happy. We even tried to pay extra, but he was having none of it. He is very competitive. He also designed and built a fitted wall-length, floor to ceiling wardrobe that is great. Garden Office: Garden2Office - Mark Ramuz 07804 632 651. Mark built a custom made office in our garden. They were so professional and great to have around. Him and his crew did an excellent job and were happy to implement last minute changes. The building is so efficient and keeps the heat really well. Will update once we get more work done. Hope this helps.

Thank you for the reply, we must check it out. At the end he decided to have it local to him and not us, but thank you for suggesting, I'm sure we can find another excuse to go out!

Hello, My father in law has tasked me with finding a nice restaurant with an outdoors area to celebrate his birthday. Any recommendations much appreciated. Anywhere in East Dulwich, Forest Hill, Sydenham or West Dulwich would work. Thanks in advance.

Hello, We have some tracks and curtain poles that need hanging. I normally would have taken this kind of thing myself, but we have a slightly odd setup in our new house and need someone who is experienced at this. The tracks will go on the ceiling, 2 tracks per bedroom as we want to hang two pair of curtains. The poles go on the wall. All have to be cut to fit and they are VERY long, 3.7m+ therefore again need someone experienced. Any recommendations much appreciated. Also - if anyone know of a curtain maker that won't charge the earth (cannot get ready made curtains as windows are too wide) please let me know. Thanks in advance.

Hi, Can anyone recommend someone to help us deal with our waterlogged garden? We've built a soak away that we thought was going to solve the problem of the small lawn we have being totally soaked,and it has helped to some extent, as most of the lawn is ok now, but all the water is now in the soak away and not draining into the soil as expected. I believe we now need to connect the soak away into the drain in the terrace. Any recommendations for someone with the right knowledge to do this for us would be much appreciated. Thanks.

To EDOliver, I'm glad you've had a good experience with Alex, I do agree with you that it was totally strange that Alex used those words even before he started. I can only asume he cannot cope with customers who are not sure about what they are doing and need some coaching and help when making the right decisions. I am always up for showing my ignorance and asking the experts for advice, i.e asking Heron floors to advice about filing gaps or not and whether they can accommodate extra work and charge for it. I cannot comment on the quality of their work as they cancelled at very short notice, can only say that they really upset the timing of the renovation project in my house. Thankfully I found Steve Loftus and Nicola from Back to Wood - also here in the forum and can only second all the other reviews in the forum. He has just finished my living room, study and landing to excellent standards, it is just so beautiful. He and Nicola where very dedicated, trying to fix several damaged boards and very patient showing us different stains as we were finding it difficult to make our minds up. They totally understood our indecision and if they were ever feeling annoyed they did not show it! Also - there was no sign of dust at all in the evenings after they had finished. Totally recommended, both because of their customer service and their work. They will be doing the master bedroom and dinning room over the next couple of weeks and I'll carry on updating.

Hello, Does anyone know if Melody's music is still in business? I've tried both of them for the last couple of days but not been able to get hold of them. Thank you.

Thank you everyone. Got in touch with Steve from Back to Wood. Very patient at discussing gap filling, whether doing everything in one go or not, etc. It makes a big diference when people listen and are ready to share their expertise without complaining of their patience being tried.

I do meant tongue and groove. They do not fit tightly, so there are gaps in between. Thanks.

Mmmh sounds great, very tempting. Do you know if you can do highlights and Brazilian blow dry at the same time? If not which one should be done first and how long do you need to wait in between. Thank you ladies, great advice here!