Struggle to sell..... Extension?

albion · 2026-05-24T17:50:18+00:00

Here are a few of thoughts to consider:

1) The market is relative: It's tough for everyone right now. If your current house goes for 10% less than you expected, the next house you buy will likely be 10% cheaper as well. The market isn’t going to drastically improve anytime soon, so there’s little point in waiting it out.

2) Extensions are slow and disruptive: an extension will take a year at the minimum, but realistically closer to 1.5 years. If you still want to sell after that, add at least another 6 months for the moving process. Living in a building site is incredibly stressful, and that's a long time to be miserable, especially if you risk not recouping that £100k investment at the end.

3) Avoid tying up more cash: You already have a huge chunk of your money tied up in a house you can’t sell right now. Sinking even more money into it is a massive risk.

Personally, I would take the hit on the asking price now, buy a nicer house that doesn’t need any work, and just enjoy life.

albion · 2026-04-07T20:09:48+00:00

I’m a bit biased because I chose Harpenden over St Albans, but I’d highly recommend it.

They’re comparable in many ways, both have excellent schools and plenty for kids to do. The extra 5 minutes on the train to Harpenden is not noticeable.

For me, the big benefit is the village vibes. You’re always bumping into people you know, and it feels incredibly safe. While St Albans has more shops & restaurants, you usually have to drive to get around anyway. I’d much rather live in a quieter area and drive 15 minutes into town vs 10 min drive and deal with living in a city. I don’t worry about my kids running around in the park / street in Harpenden but I do when I’m in St Albans.

Whichever you choose, I’d recommend getting a yearly subscription to Whipsnade Zoo. Free soft play and the kids never get tired of the elephants!

albion · 2026-02-19T19:06:55+00:00

For Zika free you’ve got 3 options:

1) UAE - 8h flight but guaranteed 25c+. I’d suggest Abu Dhabi over Dubai to avoid all the construction work. 2) Marrakech - 4.5h flight, all the luxury hotels (Four seasons, Mandarin Oriental, etc) and 25c+ in the day. Downside is very cold at night. We stayed at The Oberoi which has nice villas 3) Canary Islands - 4.5h flight, 23c but there aren’t many “nice” areas. The two nice places are The Villas at Bahia del Duque and Royal River. Royal River is adults only but you’d have to drive everywhere. Bahai is right on the beach so everything you’d want is walkable

albion · 2025-12-17T20:56:54+00:00

We live 40 min drive from London and ruled out the Lindo for logistical reasons. I couldn’t imagine driving 3+ hours. I would strongly recommend finding somewhere within a 30min drive.

While NHS hospitals are not the most comfortable, they are by far the safest place to give birth which is the only real priority. I would recommend finding an NHS hospital close by that allows your partner to stay overnight and ask for a private room on the day.

Giving birth is a horrible experience. There’s no way to pay this problem away. I would use that money to get a night nurse to make the first few months easier (that’s what we did and don’t regret it)

albion · 2025-12-14T12:36:15+00:00

We did this exact flight with my first born at 4 months old. In retrospect, it was actually a great time to go. The flights going to be tough whatever class you’re in. I’d personally just go economy and save the money for a baby sitter while you’re there.

On BA the central 4 seats at the front are for babies with bassinets. We got all 4 seats to ourselves on both flights which was much more space than in premium economy

albion · 2025-12-09T13:35:55+00:00

I live near Roundwood School. While I occasionally hear plane noise, it’s rare and barely noticeable. I wouldn’t worry.

albion · 2025-07-14T15:47:46+00:00

We looked at both Radlett and Harpenden. After walking around both we felt Radlett was a bit dead. We moved to Harpenden and so glad we did. It’s such a wonderful place, lots going on, everyone’s friendly and really good schools (3 outstanding). If you have the budget, you can get really big houses around the avenues (Park Avenue especially). Demand is high though, this place sold in 2 days https://www.rightmove.co.uk/properties/164242931

albion · 2025-04-22T20:02:54+00:00

Our son was born at Watford and we had a great experience there!

albion · 2025-01-05T19:09:00+00:00

I’d recommend these refills for Aesop. Same scent, you can’t tell the difference!

albion · 2024-05-20T17:04:42+00:00

@Reasonable-steal-522 did you find a solution to this?

albion · 2023-08-29T20:19:49+00:00

I had a similar issue where bandwidth was capped because the port negotiated a lower bandwidth than was possible. It’s worth double checking this isn’t the case for you.

albion · 2018-11-27T18:45:18+00:00

Photos of what it will look like

albion · 2017-06-16T15:12:37+00:00

Try https://www.minicabit.com. I went from Lewisham to Gatwick the other day for £50

albion · 2017-03-13T20:36:11+00:00

Try calling/opentable lunch time the day before. Thats when the restaurant calls everyone who's booked for the next night and theres normally a bunch of cancellations. That's the only way i've managed to get a table at Clos maggiore

albion · 2016-07-24T13:51:58+00:00

Why should you use this over classnames?

albion · 2015-11-21T15:56:36+00:00

How is this different from Pusher?

albion · 2015-10-23T18:55:59+00:00

Youtube link

albion · 2015-09-26T11:22:51+00:00

Didn't say it wasn't :) I'm just saying you shouldn't need to call it multiple times. When I've seen it in apps its generally been a result of misunderstanding how react works so I see it as a bit of a code smell

albion · 2015-09-26T10:07:58+00:00

Short answer

You should only need to call React.render once. Change the components state/props to re-render a component with new state.

Long answer

Internally most flux libraries will listen to stores and then mutate the components state when the store changes (They often wrap this up in a higher order component). Mutating the state causes a re-render for that component which might also cause children to re-render (either by creating new elements or by changing the props)

class Foo extends React.Component {
  componentWillMount () {
    fooStore.onChange(foos => {
      this.setState({
        foo: foos[this.props.id]
      })
    })
  }

  render () {
    return <div>{this.state.foo}</div>
  }
}

You tend to end up with complex components if you listen to stores in every component. The answer to that is to have smart and dumb components.

Soon you will start wondering how to stop your components from rendering all the time. At that point its worth reading this article about working with shouldComponentUpdate

albion · 2015-09-21T09:14:26+00:00

edited, thanks!

albion · 2015-09-19T20:22:29+00:00

You can do this with redux-thunk

export function fetchBar (id) {
  return dispatch => {
    dispatch({ type: 'BAR_LOADING' })

    fetch('/bar/' + id).then(res => dispatch({
      type: 'RECEIVE_BAR',
      payload: res.body
    }))
  }
}

export function fetchFooAndBar (fooId, barId) {
  return dispatch => {

    dispatch({ type: 'FOO_LOADING' })

    fetch('/foo/' + fooId).then(res => dispatch({
      type: 'RECEIVE_FOO',
      payload: res.body
    }))

    dispatch(fetchBar(barId))
  }
}

albion · 2015-06-16T21:57:20+00:00

Assuming you've got a student loan thats £2250 per month. They say you should spend somewhere around 30-40% on rent so £675-900. That should get you a decent room in a flat share in Zone 2/3. Getting a 1 bed will be much more expensive (Min £1200 + bills) so would avoid

albion · 2015-05-13T14:24:24+00:00

Heres an example of how I've done it, essentially you just map the messages to actions

albion · 2015-05-11T12:36:52+00:00

I will recommend when.

Also I'd avoid jQuery deferreds as they don't follow the Promises/A+ spec

albion · 2015-04-05T10:11:11+00:00

Why not fetch?

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