Moving Home is Expensive

Well this business of moving house is getting expensive and quickly.
As part of trying to sell my old house I quickly found out that my previous solicitor had made a fair mess of the conveyencing.

They had missed that the patio door had been installed without planning permission and I found that I had to go out and get a letter of comfort from building standards.

Now I did what any sane person would do and got annoyed at my previous solicitor and panicked that this was a disaster.
Once I calmed down a bit I contact building standards office who were a very nice and friendly lot.  They even gave me a step for a hint that I should install a step or it would fail before giving me a bewildering array of rules which a set of steps has to follow.  Oh and they charged me £250 for the privilege of them coming out to check the patio doors.

So I took this set of rules and set to work.  £100 of materials and a days work later I had nice set of steps (next owner of the house I hope you appreciate this) which followed to the letter every one of the rules.  For instance did you know the drop has to be between 100mm and 170mm (in ym area, local rules may vary).  Very reasonable but then each step has to be the same.  So the drop I was doing this meant I could either build two steps with 170mm drop or three with 113mm drop.  But steps (again in my area) have to be a minimum of 250mm across so three steps would stick out 75cm into the garden.  That felt like a lot so two steps it is.  Oh and there si some other weird rule about 2 times the drop plus one across has to be within a set range as well.  But my steps were a master piece in following the rules.  The guy came out, took one look, walked down them and said okay.  Not a hint of a tape measure or actually checking that the steps followed the precious rules.  I almost felt like demanding he go back and check how perfect they were.  At least that is done and once the leter comes in we are good to go.  Spoke to my current solicitor about seeing if I had any comeback against my previous solicitor for making such a mess of the conveyancing.  No was the short answer.  Yes but it would take ages and be spun out till you either got bored, fed up or died was the long answer.  So to sum up I have had to shell out an extra £350 that I was not expecting thanks to my previous solicitor not getting things right.  I have learned my lesson now though and will watch like a hawk what my current solicitor does which is a shame as they seem very on the ball.

Asides from that it has been relatively stress free :-)