Oxley Woods Living

Life in an Oxley Woods eco house

 
 

Posts Tagged ‘oxley woods living’

 

Snippets from the life from a mother of two living in Oxley woods.

August 31, 2011

I am a mother too two young children, a little girl who is coming up to three and a little boy who is one on sunday! We have lived in our little eco house for nearly two whole years. I have offered to write some blog posts in order to present a view of Oxley woods via a different set of eyes. I can not promise to blog often, or make much sense as I am no writer but I can provide an honest account of my life as a stay at home mum living in Oxley :-)

Our house is still very much a work in progress, I am a housing association tenant and the people that had the house for the short time before we moved in really didn’t look after  it so well!! It has taken a while to get used to the lack of storage (no loft) but i have become entirely creative with my solutions to that problem. so far so good!

Most recently we have had the fantastic play equipment installed over on the park, before this was all put in i used to waddle (heavily pregnant) up and down the park land pushing my toddler on her trike. It used to make me feel very lucky to have such a nice ‘green’ space on our door step. I get a bit overwhelmed with the ‘ickky city’ side of Milton Keynes so to have lovely spaces like this is awfully important to us as a family. Now we have these play parks scattered from the pond at the end of my street (Lorre mews) all the way down to near the tesco shop, it is just amazing.  We play over there daily, some times several times a day. Obviously i am just supervising and have no interest at all in playing on the super amazing tall red spider wed climby thingy…

I have been really surprised at the huge amount of children playing out there. Where were they all hiding last summer?! I am also yet to encounter a ‘horrible child’ I think most parents can relate to going along to toddler groups etc and encountering a brat baby. There is usually at least one! My little bold baby has been treated with nothing but courtesy and respect from the other children playing outside.

Watching the area and community develop is something special, it is the most friendly place I have ever lived! I can’t wait to spend many more years here.

Site moving, hold tight people!

November 18, 2010

Just a short notice to let everyone know that Oxley Woods Living is moving from a hosting provider in the US to a UK based provider.

This may result in some downtime over the next 24-48 hours, but normal (hopefully, better than normal) service shall resume by the weekend.

Can we just have our money please Taylor Wimpey?

August 27, 2010

When is a genuine gesture of goodwill, not all it seems?

When the management at Taylor Wimpey get involved, or so the case would appear to be.

In the early days of our ongoing problems with leaks, damage, unfinished items, and all the rest, our site manager here at Oxley Woods made a generous and, I believe, genuine offer to cover our fuel bills, as I believe has been mentioned on here before.

Well, after being turfed out of our house in the build up to Christmas 2009, having all doors and windows replaced, and other (but not all) remedial work completed, it felt in the spring of 2010 that we were coming to an end of our horrible time here at Oxley Woods, and were close to being able to just enjoy our family home.

We felt that it was a good point to draw  a line under an apparently perpetual agreement and finish the reimbursements for domestic bills, much of which was consumed while were out of the building.

In April 2010 Taylor Wimpey agreed to this, and assured us we would receive our money.

Here we are, a few days shy of September 2010, and we still don’t have the money we were promised.

There’s been all the usual stalling tactics played out by Wimpey, until it seems they’ve revealed their hand, and their attitude towards honesty, openness, and customer care.

They want me to sign a confidentiality agreement BEFORE they will reimburse us with the money promised over four months ago!

The fact we’ve been waiting so long, so therefore have had months to complain to our friends, neighbours and families about the situation, appears to have passed them by.  Plus, this shows, once again, how they like to shift goalposts and delay doing just about anything for as long as possible.

Perhaps they’ve been pre-occupied trying to abandon the original Oxley Woods plans in favour of continuing with more conventional housing, and they’ve forgotten about us who are already here. those who’ve money they’ve already taken, those who they owe money.  I somehow doubt it, I think they just don’t like paying up, even when they’ve agreed to do so months previously.

Felt to me like a disgusting attempt to buy silence, and clearly, one not working.

Rapid response. Genuinely.

June 9, 2010

Well, after our windows once again sprung a leak, I have to compliment the Wood Newton and Taylor Wimpey on one thing (beyond their impeccable ability to talk nonsense and wind people up).

When we reported the issue, the team on site here at Oxley Park arrived quickly, and came up with a proposal to fix the problem, and ensure it doesn’t happen on any of the windows. Before lunch we knew what they thought was causing the issue, and how they planned to (neatly) resolve it.

It does sound as though these NEW windows have another design flaw. It seems that once they’ve been weathered they can shrink and move a little (they’re wood, after all), and as a result rain water can penetrate and make its way through the “mullion”/joint, and into the property. Despite this apparent lake of water tightness and weatherproofing, it is still claimed this latest window design is “excellent”.

We’ve been having windows “fixed” for nearly two years, so I hope my lack of faith in ANY fix working is understanding. Especially when we’ve been out of our home, had the windows replaced with a fantastic new design, only to find that leaks too.

So hats off to a quick response, lets hope we get a proper, permanent, fix.

Good news, and a big thank you!

April 13, 2010

Today I had some surprising and to me wonderful news.

We finally have approval to have our living room carpet replaced.

It’s taken a long time to arrive, and a lot of going back and forth, but finally we have the green light from a senior level to have this replaced.

It may sound small, but it’s a wonderful carpet, and a parting gift from my late grandfather, something to remember him by. And it will soon be back to its former glory!

Carpet by Crucial Trading