The Berlin apartment: living with the ghosts of the past

Architect Gisbert Pöppler’s home is a shrine to the city’s past – and a collection he’s built up over the 30 years since the Wall came down

Whenever Gisbert Pöppler has people over for dinner, the ghosts of Berlin’s past are guests of honour. Grouped around the dining table in his apartment in Berlin’s central Mitte district are three velvet armchairs the interior architect salvaged from what he calls the “Honecker lounge” at East Germany’s State Council Building, moulded over time by the well-nourished bottoms of Soviet apparatchiks. The table itself was formerly a conference table at Berlin’s Evangelical Academy, and if you look under the table top you realise the short legs are propped up on some old-fashioned metal money boxes, like a piece of concept art. “I’ve always wondered why this table is so low,” Pöppler says as he strolls through his apartment on sunny autumn morning. “One theory is that the Protestant church didn’t want people in important meetings to be able to hide behind the furniture. Isn’t that a beautiful idea?”

Pöppler, whose practice usually designs and builds living spaces for other people, lives in an apartment that not only speaks of his love for the ideas behind everyday objects, but also doubles as a museum of the German capital’s tumultuous history.

Continue reading...

from Property | The Guardian https://ift.tt/2oAUiuS
via IFTTT

How to grow oyster mushrooms at home | Alys Fowler

Growing mushrooms from scratch requires care, so start with a kit and go from there, says our gardening expert

Whether it’s microdosing with psychedelic mushrooms, seeking biodegradable alternatives to polystyrene, or mycologist Paul Stamets’ TED talk (over 5m views on ted.com), fungi is a hot topic. Mushroom gardens are spaces to grow gourmet delights such as oyster or shiitake mushrooms: think elegant woodland dwellings with logs and woodchip beds. Fungi are the perfect solution for slightly damp, shady city gardens, or that spot under a tree where nothing grows. Instead of battling to get plants to take hold, inoculate your ground with mushrooms instead.

Continue reading...

from Property | The Guardian https://ift.tt/2MauMWn
via IFTTT

Gardening tips: leave fallen leaves for hedgehogs and insects

Then plant euphorbias and visit Beth Chatto’s garden

Plant this I love Euphorbia characias, and it loves me – or at least my garden. I love the cream and green cultivar ‘Tasmanian Tiger’, which has an award of garden merit from the RHS; it thrives in full sun and well-drained soil. Height and spread: 55cm x 80cm.

Leaf this The urge to tidy is strong at this time of year, but remember that wildlife needs plant debris for winter hidey-holes. Clear fallen leaves from paths, and rake them up from the lawn, but leave borders untouched (aside from removing any diseased leaves) to benefit hedgehogs and insects.

Continue reading...

from Property | The Guardian https://ift.tt/2Mv1VuM
via IFTTT

Help-to-buy Isa: last chance to get up to £3,000 of free government cash

If you plan to be a first-time buyer, getting a help-to-buy Isa is a no-brainer – but you need to get a move on

Time is running out if you haven’t taken advantage of the government’s offer of free money towards buying your first home.

That’s because the help-to-buy Isa – with which the government will give you up to £3,000 with only some strings attached – closes to new savers on 30 November. Provided you are in before that date, you can continue tucking money away for another 10 years.

Continue reading...

from Property | The Guardian https://ift.tt/2OFvBIj
via IFTTT

Flat owners get £31,000 bill for balconies ‘left to rot’

Residents are furious at a massive bill for fixing structures they say are the landlord’s responsibility

The owners of six flats have been left reeling after being hit with a bill for £31,000 from their landlord – for repairing two small wooden balconies which the residents claim had been left to rot through lack of maintenance.

They also say the demand is almost seven times the £4,500 figure for tackling the problem quoted in a report commissioned by the landlord.

Continue reading...

from Property | The Guardian https://ift.tt/35slxIM
via IFTTT

What to do if your buyers keep pulling out Nottingham Estate Agents

Buying and selling houses inevitably comes with highs and lows. A particular low can be when buyers drop out. But what should you do if the worst happens? And how can you be in the best position to prevent it? Identify the issue and deal with it A sale could fall through for a number […]

The post What to do if your buyers keep pulling out appeared first on OnTheMarket.com blog.

from OnTheMarket.com blog https://ift.tt/3192AYf
via IFTTT

Let’s move to St Leonards-on-Sea, East Sussex: the yin to Hastings’ yang

This seaside town has stepped out of the shadow of its twin. One could say it was gentrifying, were it not built for the gentry

What’s going for it? St Leonards has come of age. For years, all talk has been of its elderly twin, Hastings, newly colonised by rat-race escapees, with their boutiques selling linocut prints or vintage eccles cakes. But slowly, to the west, its neighbour has been undergoing its own metamorphosis. It is very much yin to Hastings’ yang. Whereas Hastings’ Old Town is all higgledy half-timber and tattooed sea dogs, hipster or otherwise, St Leonards has from its birth been a refined, Regency place. Work began on the town in 1826, by a prescient down-from-London-er, James Burton, a property developer who built much of Bloomsbury, and his son, Decimus, an architect. Their work survives, its stucco now largely freshly painted and reappreciated after the doldrum decades. Shab remains, but also the flipside, a slightly anarchic freedom and odd shops that come from low (although risen) property prices. One could say St Leonards was gentrifying, were it not in fact built for the gentry.

The case against Don’t mention the G-word, or call it, as some property column or other (was it me?) did a decade ago, “Portobello-on-Sea”. It is not, although the interiors bloggers are coming. Still host to the usual ingrained seaside town problems. Traffic.

Continue reading...

from Property | The Guardian https://ift.tt/35mViDz
via IFTTT