My family and I had recently decided to set up some holiday cottages in the grounds of our lovely home in rural Edinburgh. We had bought the four properties and were in the process of furnishing them before we could let them out to visitors.

They were nearly done, but we wanted to give them a little something extra to give our guests that lovely rustic feel we thought they would like. We decided to go for traditional wood burning stoves in the cabins and had a look at www.woodburningstovesedinburgh.co.uk to see what they could offer us.

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Every time I stood at my sink to do the washing up or even just get a glass of water, I ended up with drips on my head.

I had been putting up with it for a while, but eventually I decided the buckets had to go and something had to be done about my leaky roof.

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Is there anything worse than a plumbing emergency? I don’t really think there is after my pipe burst a few weeks ago, leaving my house in complete chaos. My husband is incredibly un-handy around the house, so there was no hope in him helping. We needed to call in the experts.

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My daughter and I moved into a gorgeous old house on the outskirts of Edinburgh about two years ago. It’s a lovely house, it feels nice and homey and traditional, but it has all the mod cons to make it easy to live in.

I’ve always felt like there was something missing from the house though, especially in the living room. It just didn’t feel quite right. My daughter and I had spent months trying to decide what we could do to make it better and after all the time deliberating we settled on the fact we needed a new old-fashioned fireplace.

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I think that I could definitely be in the running for the clumsiest person in the world. If there is a bit of water to slip on, or an expensive piece of crockery to drop, I will find it and fall over/break it. My friends and family find my lack of special awareness incredibly amusing, but I have started to find it very frustrating and incredibly time consuming.

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There is never a good time for the boiler to go, is there? Hot water and heat are just some of those things it’s very hard to live without.

But you can guarantee that when it does go it will be at the most inconvenient time of the year. Say Christmas, when your elderly auntie is coming for dinner and she won’t enter the house unless it’s burning like a furnace.

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It’s funny how hugely inconvenient things always happen at the most hugely inconvenient times.

I had moved into my house in Bristol a few years ago and after manically decorating and nest-making for the past year and a half it was all finally sorted and I was happy with it. It was really cosy and I couldn’t wait to sit snuggled up inside with the heating on over the winter.

Then disaster struck. The boiler died.

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When we bought our property, we knew that there was a lot of work to be done on it. However, as soon as we started renovating it, we realised there was even more than we’d first thought.

At the same time, my husband got a new job, so he wasn’t available to help out. We needed some external help so i looked up building contractors in Newton Abbey on the internet and got lots of results.

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Companies that deal with garages in Hoddesdon are proving to be a slight hassle!

I moved into my new property around two months ago now and I absolutely love it. There is still lots of little niggles which need to be sorted out, but in general I’m getting there!

One of the problems which quickly needs sorting out is related to the garage. The garage door seems to have suffered some damage somewhere along the line. I’m presuming that somebody has tried to get into the garage and have forced it open to gain entry. One thing I don’t want is somebody else trying to break into it and having an easy time because it’s on its last legs already!

Now, I know garage doors aren’t cheap but I don’t want to pay over the odds because to be honest, I don’t use the garage that much. I’m just conscious of it being a target for a burglar which is why I’m going to get it fixed.

I have found a website called www.garagedoorshoddesdon.co.uk which offers replacement garage doors at a competitive price. (more…)

We have reached that time of year again when the cross words commence in homes about the highly contentious issue of the turning on of the central heating! There is usually a group wanting the heating on and a second camp fighting to keep it off. A friend of mine (a man) who had fitted a false thermostat and hid the real thermostat where only he had access to it! It’s usually about now that boilers start breaking down. That’s when we need a good local boiler repairs firm. For our family that’s Boiler Repairs in Basingstoke. (more…)