American Living in London for 12 Years: AMA

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Today is a slow day and I also realised it's my 12 year anniversary of living in London! I moved here as a newlywed and we are now raising 4 children. Thought it might be fun to do an AMA if you are interested.

(I found DCUM while researching lunch boxes one day and you ladies dragged me in )

Can you answer questions please

she probably can't answer most of these questions to be fair - because she doesn't know the answers. And its foolish to think a person from the US living in London would know some of the answers to the questions on here.

Me, on the other hand, I'm from the UK and have lived in the US for 12 years. But its far too boring to answer questions about London / aristos and the like, so I don't bother.

I laughed. I'm American but I've lived for a number of years both in London and elsewhere in the UK. Asking an American expat in London, especially Primrose Hill/North London, is like asking a British expat living in New York's Park Slope or Brooklyn Heights what life in America is like!

exactly. total waste of time.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:British houses are smaller than their American counterparts. Quite often much smaller. Take this upmarket new build in an affluent London suburb: https://www.rightmove.co.uk/property-for-sale/property-68201313.html you can see from the floorplan how small the house really is. And because of the cooler and damper climate, houses were rarely built with large open rooms but rather multiple small closed rooms, which were easier to heat. It's only been recently that you started seeing the open kitchen-family room great room combination in newer properties.

On the other hand, there's also plenty of very large houses in Britain. Leagues of gorgeous old rectories, Victorian villas and Georgian houses all over Britain. But most British people do live in much smaller quarters than Americans do. Generally speaking you get more space the further away from London.

Housing quality varies, especially for new builds. Lots of cheaply built flats and terraced houses, but also amazingly well built bigger houses at the same time with solid masonry and slate, unlike in the US.

Sevenoaks is not a London suburb. Hence, the property price! It is true that people commute into London from Kent but the equivalent is like living in Middleburg VA.

Wrong the direct train to Charing X takes 22 mins. That's a lot quicker than Middleburg VA to DC

Fine, but it's still not a London suburb, not as that term is understood in London, anyway!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:What a riveting AMA

Especially as OP solicited questions and then has barely answered any.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:British houses are smaller than their American counterparts. Quite often much smaller. Take this upmarket new build in an affluent London suburb: https://www.rightmove.co.uk/property-for-sale/property-68201313.html you can see from the floorplan how small the house really is. And because of the cooler and damper climate, houses were rarely built with large open rooms but rather multiple small closed rooms, which were easier to heat. It's only been recently that you started seeing the open kitchen-family room great room combination in newer properties.

On the other hand, there's also plenty of very large houses in Britain. Leagues of gorgeous old rectories, Victorian villas and Georgian houses all over Britain. But most British people do live in much smaller quarters than Americans do. Generally speaking you get more space the further away from London.

Housing quality varies, especially for new builds. Lots of cheaply built flats and terraced houses, but also amazingly well built bigger houses at the same time with solid masonry and slate, unlike in the US.

It seems like most UK kitchens have those high gloss cabinets? I've never been a fan. Also, is central air/heat not a thing there? It's funny to me as an American to see those old-school radiators in each room.

Brit here who now lives here. Kitchen design (and design generally) is much more modern. The shaker cabinet, subway tile thing is unusual and I've seen it in only in a few houses where I think they are trying to emulate that style from the US. Much more common is the IKEA look, at the cheaper end, and German or Italian kitchens like Poggenpohl at the higher end. Most houses have what we call central heating, but it just means a centrally controlled system for the radiators, which you then adjust in each room as needed. I actually love this kind of heating! Most houses do not have a/c, generally because of the climate - it is rarely needed. For maybe 2 or 3 weeks a year you might wish you had it, but otherwise it wouldn't be needed. It is also rarely humid, even when it is hot.
House building materials are also really different. Here, houses are built with a lot of wood - they are framed, but in the UK breeze blocks are used - big bricks made of cement - and then inside walls are plastered, there is no drywall.

I grew up in a London suburb and we had a big house and garden. Not huge by US standards but it felt very spacious, and it was pretty big for London - it was about 4000sqft. This is not it, but this is a similar house in a similar suburb:
https://www.primelocation.com/for-sale/details/53957313?search_identifier=d05856ad99421d50318c008a7f69232e

This is similar to the first place I bought with my husband where we had 2 kids before moving here:

https://www.primelocation.com/for-sale/details/54442173?search_identifier=fc55af0384b0b12b2e7a3ac6cc932c7b

Lovely homes, but oh my the price tags! I doubt many Londoners in DC would ever complain about our cost of property.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Arsenal or Spurs?

Brit here. Do you even need to ask? COYS!!!

Did you lose a bet?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:British houses are smaller than their American counterparts. Quite often much smaller. Take this upmarket new build in an affluent London suburb: https://www.rightmove.co.uk/property-for-sale/property-68201313.html you can see from the floorplan how small the house really is. And because of the cooler and damper climate, houses were rarely built with large open rooms but rather multiple small closed rooms, which were easier to heat. It's only been recently that you started seeing the open kitchen-family room great room combination in newer properties.

On the other hand, there's also plenty of very large houses in Britain. Leagues of gorgeous old rectories, Victorian villas and Georgian houses all over Britain. But most British people do live in much smaller quarters than Americans do. Generally speaking you get more space the further away from London.

Housing quality varies, especially for new builds. Lots of cheaply built flats and terraced houses, but also amazingly well built bigger houses at the same time with solid masonry and slate, unlike in the US.

Sevenoaks is not a London suburb. Hence, the property price! It is true that people commute into London from Kent but the equivalent is like living in Middleburg VA.

Seveonaks is definitely in the commuter belt! It's comparable to commuting into Manhattan from Greenwich or Darien.

[Anonymous]

. Take this upmarket new build in an affluent London suburb: https://www.rightmove.co.uk/property-for-sale/property-68201313.html you can see from the floorplan how small the house really is. And because of the cooler and damper climate, houses were rarely built with large open rooms but rather multiple small closed rooms, which were easier to heat. It's only been recently that you started seeing the open kitchen-family room great room combination in newer properties.





But what's with the heating coils in a new-build, expensive-ish house? see bedroom picture in above link

[Anonymous]

questions/comments for OP:

I very much wanted to live in London with my teenagers for a few (1-5?). Applied to ASL twice, but they didn't want us (coming from top DC independent schools). It seemed to me that they really only wanted folks who had big corporate jobs where the companies were paying for tuition, leaving families to make big donations. or what do you think?

I still may come for a year, but probably without kids--which I think may make it harder to find any friends at all! For ASL, I was set on living in St Johns Wood or Primrose areas. Where do you think I might be happiest if I came for a year either with my sister, or husband, or a grown child? I love London for lots of things, but particularly because I am a big walker and don't mind long walks (or biking) to get anywhere.


After we have a vaccine, if you want to trade houses (close-in DC suburb) for a vacation, happy to exchange contact info!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:British houses are smaller than their American counterparts. Quite often much smaller. Take this upmarket new build in an affluent London suburb: https://www.rightmove.co.uk/property-for-sale/property-68201313.html you can see from the floorplan how small the house really is. And because of the cooler and damper climate, houses were rarely built with large open rooms but rather multiple small closed rooms, which were easier to heat. It's only been recently that you started seeing the open kitchen-family room great room combination in newer properties.

On the other hand, there's also plenty of very large houses in Britain. Leagues of gorgeous old rectories, Victorian villas and Georgian houses all over Britain. But most British people do live in much smaller quarters than Americans do. Generally speaking you get more space the further away from London.

Housing quality varies, especially for new builds. Lots of cheaply built flats and terraced houses, but also amazingly well built bigger houses at the same time with solid masonry and slate, unlike in the US.

It seems like most UK kitchens have those high gloss cabinets? I've never been a fan. Also, is central air/heat not a thing there? It's funny to me as an American to see those old-school radiators in each room.

Brit here who now lives here. Kitchen design (and design generally) is much more modern. The shaker cabinet, subway tile thing is unusual and I've seen it in only in a few houses where I think they are trying to emulate that style from the US. Much more common is the IKEA look, at the cheaper end, and German or Italian kitchens like Poggenpohl at the higher end. Most houses have what we call central heating, but it just means a centrally controlled system for the radiators, which you then adjust in each room as needed. I actually love this kind of heating! Most houses do not have a/c, generally because of the climate - it is rarely needed. For maybe 2 or 3 weeks a year you might wish you had it, but otherwise it wouldn't be needed. It is also rarely humid, even when it is hot.
House building materials are also really different. Here, houses are built with a lot of wood - they are framed, but in the UK breeze blocks are used - big bricks made of cement - and then inside walls are plastered, there is no drywall.

I grew up in a London suburb and we had a big house and garden. Not huge by US standards but it felt very spacious, and it was pretty big for London - it was about 4000sqft. This is not it, but this is a similar house in a similar suburb:
https://www.primelocation.com/for-sale/details/53957313?search_identifier=d05856ad99421d50318c008a7f69232e

This is similar to the first place I bought with my husband where we had 2 kids before moving here:

https://www.primelocation.com/for-sale/details/54442173?search_identifier=fc55af0384b0b12b2e7a3ac6cc932c7b

Lovely homes, but oh my the price tags! I doubt many Londoners in DC would ever complain about our cost of property.

Correct, we do not! I consider DC property to be very cheap, and selling our London house, especially with the exchange rate as it then was, allowed us to buy a really great house here.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:. Take this upmarket new build in an affluent London suburb: https://www.rightmove.co.uk/property-for-sale/property-68201313.html you can see from the floorplan how small the house really is. And because of the cooler and damper climate, houses were rarely built with large open rooms but rather multiple small closed rooms, which were easier to heat. It's only been recently that you started seeing the open kitchen-family room great room combination in newer properties.





But what's with the heating coils in a new-build, expensive-ish house? see bedroom picture in above link

You mean the radiator? See post a few above this - almost all houses are heated this way. The boiler pumps hot water to the radiators, it's a very efficient and effective way to heat the house. There is no a/c because it's not required in the climate.

[Anonymous]

I much prefer radiators to forced air. No garbage air coming from dirty vents, and much less drying.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Arsenal or Spurs?

Brit here. Do you even need to ask? COYS!!!

Did you lose a bet?

I don’t know why anyone would be a spud, unless you inherit it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I much prefer radiators to forced air. No garbage air coming from dirty vents, and much less drying.

This

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:British houses are smaller than their American counterparts. Quite often much smaller. Take this upmarket new build in an affluent London suburb: https://www.rightmove.co.uk/property-for-sale/property-68201313.html you can see from the floorplan how small the house really is. And because of the cooler and damper climate, houses were rarely built with large open rooms but rather multiple small closed rooms, which were easier to heat. It's only been recently that you started seeing the open kitchen-family room great room combination in newer properties.

On the other hand, there's also plenty of very large houses in Britain. Leagues of gorgeous old rectories, Victorian villas and Georgian houses all over Britain. But most British people do live in much smaller quarters than Americans do. Generally speaking you get more space the further away from London.

Housing quality varies, especially for new builds. Lots of cheaply built flats and terraced houses, but also amazingly well built bigger houses at the same time with solid masonry and slate, unlike in the US.

Sevenoaks is not a London suburb. Hence, the property price! It is true that people commute into London from Kent but the equivalent is like living in Middleburg VA.

Seveonaks is definitely in the commuter belt! It's comparable to commuting into Manhattan from Greenwich or Darien.

I've lived in Greenwich CT and Sevenoaks Kent. GT takes 42 mins to Grand Central and then you have to hop on a subway, Sevenoaks is 22 mins to Charing X and you can walk into town its right there.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Bloody hell OP, 6 pages and still ghosting this thread?! Total bollocks.

What does bollocks mean?