Getting the most from your home August 25, 2011 WHETHER you’re keen to sell your home, attract lucrative renters or simply want to make your rooms look good before the winter sets in, sprucing up your home with a little DIY is a good idea. Don’t panic if you don’t have stacks of cash available or begrudge the idea of spending money on a [...]
CANTERBURY, KENT August 25, 2011 STOURMOUTH Price: £1.1m On 2.2 acres of land, this country home has recently been restored. A long gravel driveway leads you up to this seven bedroomed house. This huge property has a farmhouse kitchen, cellar and wine vault. Contact: Strutt & Parker on Canterbury 01227 451 123 or go to www.struttandparker.com OLD RECTORY Price: £795,000 [...]
PROPERTY NEWS August 25, 2011 NEW HOMES COMING TO CLAPHAM A new residential development on St. John’s Hill, Clapham, opens its showrooms on 3 September. Developed by Loncor Homes, the Lismore comprises 14 two and three bedroom apartments and a high-specification three-bedroom townhouse. Contact: Hamptons International on 020 7758 8488 or go to www.hamptons.co.uk RENT TO RISE AGAIN BY CHRISTMAS [...]
RENT August 25, 2011 Director of Central London lettings firm Draker Lettings Q. I have several rental properties in central London and want to see if I can maximise my return next year by letting some or all of them for the Olympics. What should I charge and should I look for shorter tenancies now to ensure that they [...]
Homes still pay on the Cote d’Azur August 25, 2011 WHAT with European economic chaos, earthquakes and hurricanes pummelling the US and the most valuable company in the world losing its CEO, one rather can’t help but recall Benjamin Franklin’s saying: “In this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes”. Well, perhaps Franklin missed one thing in his list of [...]
Barnes thrills with English storytelling at its terse best August 24, 2011 THE SENSE OF AN ENDING BY JULIAN BARNES Jonathan Cape, £12.99 IN the past, I have found Julian Barnes – most famously author of Flaubert’s Parrot – less tractable than his contemporaries. If given the choice between Ian McEwan – of whose even-shorter novella On Chesil Beach this book reminds me – or Martin Amis, [...]
My boyfriend gets drunk so often. Does he have a problem? August 24, 2011 SOLVING YOUR WORK-LIFE PROBLEMS My boyfriend works as a broker and booze is a big part of his (and our) lives. We all love a drink or two with mates after work, but he drinks at lunch and gets smashed at least three times a week. He comes home at 4AM and wakes me up, [...]
For the best in-car sound system around, go British August 24, 2011 IT would be easy to assume that having a spectacular in-car sound system would mean having a spectacularly loud sound system – the kind of pimped-up, bass-heavy bulldozer of a system that occupies the entire boot and can shake a whole neighbourhood. But that would be wrong. Instead of volume and bass thump, consider a [...]
Watch out for the mobile apps that hide malware August 24, 2011 TECH TALK IT would be crass to describe smartphones as the new rock and roll – but they do make beautiful music. But like many top, none-too-reliable performers, your mobile can’t handle money, everybody wants a piece of it and it’s incredibly insecure. Which is dangerous enough in a musician but fatal for a computer [...]
Taking soundbars into orbit August 24, 2011 IT looks like the looming black monolith from 2001, A Space Odyssey, but the speaker system on the left is a deft spatial stereo gizmo constructed by another plucky British company, the sci fi-sounding Orbitsound. Announced this week and coming into shops next month, the soundbar (which has the not-exactly-charismatic title of T12v3) is able [...]