Tag Archives: property

From Decorating to Disruption



I hate decorating. It’s not about the time, effort or disruption, although those are all good reasons to dislike it. It’s just so….primitive. The artisans of the palaeolithic period daubed paint on walls 20,000 years ago and they were considerably more skilled than I am. Why am I still having to choose between minute variations of colour and shade with artificial names such as “Space Cloud 5” before brushing it on the plasterwork with spatters of paint everywhere?

As for plaster, it’s an unnecessary coating trowelled onto the walls to cover up the mess of masonry or plasterboard. Even then it’s not done properly and the plasterwork finishes a few inches from the floor for skirting boards to cover up the messy edge. I loathe skirting boards – they’re simply extra work and have no purpose other than to hide the incompetence of the building trade.

Look at all this woodwork round a door. Again it’s hiding that the builders don’t seem to be able to created a decent doorway without all this wood covering the ends of the walls and other messy bits. No doubt they’ll mutter flexibility and ease of making changes. Rubbish. They never worried about flexibility when putting in the minimum number of power sockets and then plastering the electrical cables into the walls.

And don’t get me started on water-based central heating. Why do we heat water to 60C before piping it to large radiators taking up most of the wall space to then heat the air in the room to 20C? It’s inefficient and slow to respond to need. Instead, heat the air to 20C and pipe the air to the room through an air vent. It’s more efficient, faster to respond and less chance of the home being ruined when a water pipe bursts.

Let’s be honest, domestic houses are an inefficient bodge job designed 50 years ago with absolutely no consideration given to the changing needs of the residents over time. Business doesn’t put up with this. Its properties have suspended ceilings, raised floors, partitions, cable ducts and air management which can easily be adjusted to cope with new requirements.

Domestic properties need disruption. The incumbent builders have no interest in changing when the average UK house price is £290,000 and they can make over 100% profit and close to 200% profit in some areas. It’s rip-off Britain.