Firm Foundations Some followers of the Phoenix Quest appear to possess expertise in the building trade and offer ‘useful’ advice: ‘Expect the worst.’ ‘The timescales will overrun.’ ‘The budget will blow.’ Since these Doubting Thomases do not have access to a crystal...
Room with a View The feature photograph is not quite the Florentine view of E. M Forster’s River Arno and this post is not to be confused with that story, nor the 1980’s Merchant Ivory classic film adaptation of his Edwardian tale, A Room with a View. Of the ever...
Blue Sky Reality Today is one of those days of Blue Sky reality. The Blue Sky dreaming used to stretch my vision to a vanishing point; always drawing me towards the goal; always just out of reach of my fingertips. No more. After many years of imagining and several...
Pots of Money Following the late August departure of the lovely ladies in my last Phoenix Quest post, I left you pondering the question of budget, or rather its pots of money definition. You may be suspecting some kind of overspend or major unforeseen issue, requiring...
Somewhat belatedly, for those reasons life throws at you, here is the next instalment of the Phoenix Quest. It may seem a little incongruous to be recounting events which took place last summer, when the sky was blue and air was deliciously warm. All too quickly the...
Sympathetic refurbishment. An estate agent's cliché? Maybe. To us, restoring some period character to our home was an essential element of our architect's brief. My business brain leads the way, backed up with enough cumulative research to support the notion...
Being a property development novice is both exciting and daunting. Many a cautionary tale has been told on the subject. An abundance of television programmes inform us of the pitfalls at every stage. Some developers focus on the grandeur of their scheme, paying no...
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