When you buy a house on a large development, at first there doesn’t need any change to the property – it’s all divinely brand new and you revel in that luscious smell of paint and woodwork.  It’s only after a couple of years you realise the limitations of the design.  The ensuite is really the wrong way round – wouldn’t the basin be much more useful on the other wall, and the shower cubicle is just a bit tight.  The kitchen is usually first on anyone’s hit list for changing.  Mine for example has the gas hob down the narrow

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I had the chance to go and stay with a host family in the States recently – not quite an exchange visit but one where I had the opportunity to live in with a family rather than a hotel.  It was really a great idea.  You see and experience things that hotels simply cannot offer.  One for starters was seeing up close how they build new houses in Texas.  They have an massive amount of wood at their disposal and the A frame and all other framework is cut from this and they seem to have many sets of frames

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Since the beginning of the Victorian period, there has been such a boom in population around the industrial areas of this country and indeed, the inner cities, that providing enough housing has been challenging.   A challenge that has yet to be fully met.  Every frew years there is a carrion cry for more social housing and successive governments have made half hearted efforts to appear to be doing something about it.    On some housing developments, there are a handful of ‘affordable’ houses which are generally on a shared rent/mortgage basis.  I’m not sure how this helps those at the lower

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