Latest blog posts

This post was inspired by a question posed recently by a homeowner who was concerned about the neighbour’s new basement excavation and whether or not it would undermine her property. She wanted to know what precautions could be taken to ensure that the neighbour would dig under the party wall only and stop as soon as they had enough room to ... Read more >>

As a recent graduate and Assistant Surveyor, a large part of my training was party wall related. As part of that training I spent time assisting the team that deal with new enquiries in sending fee proposals and liaising with owners. I thought it might be helpful to work through an example relating to a rear extension. When preparing a fee ... Read more >>

Every now and then there is a catastrophic incident involving the construction industry somewhere in the UK. When a house collapses it gets reported in the national press and sometimes on radio and TV. It’s a dramatic event but fortunately it doesn’t happen that often. A recently reported case involved an ordinary medium sized, Victorian, ... Read more >>

If you’ve read the previous posts in this series you’ll know that the renovation was split in to 2 phases; effectively dividing the barn down the middle. Since the last post was uploaded phase 1 has been largely completed so we’ve swapped sides with the builders. Even though phase 1 overran by about 5 weeks I’m still told that the work ... Read more >>

Our 2 children went back to school this week and that was originally the target for phase 1 of the refurbishment to be completed. Unfortunately, we’re running 4 weeks behind the programme so we’ve had to set the kid’s desks up on the landing for the next few weeks. Despite the delays it’s nice to see phase 1 progressing, all of the 1st ... Read more >>

We’re now 6 weeks in to phase 1 of the work and I’d estimate that we’ve fallen a couple of weeks behind the program. The reason appears to be the lack of availability of sub-contractors but hopefully we’ll pull back the time during the phase 2 program which appears to be a bit more generous. Anyway, it is nice to see the shape of the ... Read more >>

We’re now a little over halfway through phase 1 of our barn refurbishment. The structure of the barn is long and narrow so it divides quite neatly in to 2 parts with a sound and dust proof screen in the middle. Phase 1, the smaller half of the barn, is programmed to take 9 weeks following which we swap halves with the builders and work continues ... Read more >>

As you can see from the picture below, work is now well underway on the refurbishment of our barn. The lower part of that space was my bedroom until last Sunday evening! As only demolition work has happened so far I thought I’d provide a quick overview of the planning process in this post. The barn is Grade II listed so any changes, ... Read more >>

Having talked about it for many years my family and I ‘escaped to the country’ in October last year; specifically to a converted barn on the edge of a little Essex village. When we started our search we laid down certain criteria, the property had to be: Within a 1 hour drive of Peter Barry’s North London office. In a rural ... Read more >>

We’ve written quite a few posts over the last few months on how the Leasehold Reform, Housing and Urban Development Act 1993 works in principle, so we thought it was probably about time to look at a ‘Real World’ example and show how you can benefit from taking professional advice at an early stage. As they always say in these cases, ... Read more >>