I bought a derelict garage in Wales. Thinking time...

Splitting the building into two units does put a different slant on the situation. Still, I reckon it's important to write to them, nothing like a hard copy that's dated & signed for.

Lol, Birmingham by any chance?

Ahhh, the heady days of John Bright Street by any chance?




Oh right. Not John Bright Street then.

You were thinking of the same person as me then, co incidence that fire happens when it was up for redevelopment.
Many a drunken hour got spent in Edwards, the Foundry and Sinatra's before it got made into the posh wine bar but kept the drinks prices the same.

I would have been there 90-94. I've been back a few times but it changed so much I don't know anywhere now.
curse word knows what happened to my life, this isn't how the future was supposed to be.

Sorry to the OP for clogging up his thread.

Scottish Power are fairly notorious for stuff like this, I had a case at work (I'm a junior solicitor...it was an accident!) With them, similar issue for a period of about 5 years. Lots of written evidence required.

I also have had a fair few people trying to bring legal cases about strips of land such as that to the side of the unit. Usually I tell then to p!ss off but the law on it is old and as precise as a brick. Only when a boundary has had final determination by a court is actually fixed. Boundaries in UK law can move about, even if they're walls, and title plans are subject to the general boundaries rule and as such are simply to illustrate one title against another. The original deed is he best document, but is often erroneous or lost. It is possible that it was just a bit of land that was simply forgotten, happens quite a fair bit, but most likey will belong to one or other of the properties nearby. However, as said best left alone as it isn't worth hassle. I've seen people try and litigate over land that fits under a sheet of A4 (that is genuinely true). I hate it (I'm not a particularly successful lawyer, no interest in cr@p!) Anyway, awesome garage as I've said, rather envious, gates look awesome.

As above, but make sure to keep dated copies of anything you send to utilities, things have a habit of going missing or not being delivered, even signed for
Ask me how I know.....🤔

I think it's time to have a close look at the toilet.

At some point a lean-to extension was built on to the back of my garage, to make a space for a toilet. It wasn't built very well, and just to make matters worse when the roof was renewed a few years ago the toilet roof was dismantled but never put back. I think this was probably because the then-owners discovered that the main support beam was rotten. Possibly they planned to replace it, but that was never done. It's still there, still rotten. The roof slates are stacked up inside the garage...and the toilet itself has been open to the sky ever since.





The space did scrub up quite well, and the toilet itself does flush (with a bucket of water). I assume the flush ends up in the cesspit, but as the cesspit has been partly filled with gravel it's not really possible to check if the pipework is functioning correctly. Still, the water is going somewhere...





The only access to the toilet was a silly little door - about four feet high - which had been let into the wall between the toilet and the extension-part of the garage. I would like to replace this with a less-silly door suitable for humans, not hobbits, and in any case the brickwork was pretty shaky. So a certain amount of demolition took place.





The brickwork could simply be pushed over by hand.





Of course, full PPE was worn at all times.





Here's the rotten toilet roof beam. I don't dare remove it, because I suspect that one bolt, which attaches the toilet roof beam to a main roof beam, is the only thing that's stopping the entire extension-part of the building from folding up. Once I get some Acrow props in strategic locations, it can be carefully dismantled. But for now, it has to stay.





Silly little doorway (and surrounding brickwork) demolished. Temporary wooden support added to shore up sagging beam. There's a brick wall - the back wall of the building, such as it is - under all that ivy. The roof of the building slopes right down to about 3 feet off the ground at the back, meaning I've got lots of floor space but no headroom.





The view through the roof. The toilet (and indeed most of the main building) backs directly on to my neighbour's garden. I don't have any access to the rear unless I ask him. That's not really a problem - I shouldn't need to access the back wall very much - but it's going to make things a little awkward when I build a new toilet roof. Originally the eaves overhung his garden, but I'd like the new roof to be fully on my side. So I think I'm going to tweak the design a little bit, rather than just doing a like-for-like replacement.

By the way, the tent that is just visible in my neighbour's garden is his work space. Apparently this is the only place he can get a Wi-Fi signal, so he sits out here with his laptop - or, at least, he was doing that during the summer. Not sure what he does in the winter. Personally, I would've just put up a booster of some kind. Maybe an aerial installed somewhere high up in his house would work. A tent next to an open-air toilet is a workaround, not a solution!





Nobody had cleaned out the gutters for a few years, so I scraped out the accumulated compost.





Looking in the opposite direction, over the slate roof of the main building. Re-roofed in about 2011 by the motorcycle mechanic's girlfriend, I'm told, and she did a good job. She seems to have dropped her mug, though.

I thought the most painless method of cleaning out this gutter, given that I have no access at ground level, would be to pull out the mess with a set of drain rods, which I've got at home. But before I could return to the site with the rods we had a few days of heavy rain, and the next time I was at the garage I was told by the neighbour that the gutter had overflowed and caused all sorts of flooding in his garden.

I stood there looking suitably sorry about it all, but I suspected he was laying on the drama a bit thick. One of the things he mentioned was that my gutter had no stop-end, thus causing lots of water to cascade down his shed roof. He told me he had gone out and bought a stop-end....and then he paused expectantly, presumably so I could jump in and say, "Oh, cheers, mate, I'll reimburse you for that." But I didn't say that. Because I don't think he bought a stop-end at all. There's quite clearly one already in place in this photo!





Here's my idea for rebuilding the toilet. I'm going to build a new lean-to building just inside the footprint of the present one. The bits of wood on the floor here show roughly where the walls will go. This will create a narrow pathway around the outside of the building, giving me a bit of outside access at the rear where at present there is none. The existing walls will be reduced in height and remain as boundary walls. Obviously the toilet will become smaller, but that's no problem. It's a toilet. It doesn't need to be a massive space.





The brickwork on the existing lean-to walls is fairly terrible, but that doesn't matter. This will be nothing more than the back garden wall eventually, and further down the brickwork is good enough for that. I'm going to take the top few courses off, and cap it off with some coping slabs.





Somebody had covered the tops of the walls with sheets of lead - presumably a temporary measure until they got the roof back on. But the roof never went back on, so the temporary repair became permanent.

In this pic you can see I've added a downpipe which eventually will discharge into some sort of gulley in my new back path. Exact drainage arrangements are still tbc, but the pipe will be outside the building, not inside, in the end.





Well, as I always say, if you've got a soggy piece of wood handy, you're never stuck for a screwdriver holder.





New downpipe, old everything else. The toilet itself and the basin will have to be moved, of course - and I'd like to know where all those pipes go. I'll be keeping the blue basin, of course. That's a fine period detail!

Definitely part of the plan!