I'm due to complete on said house this friday :-)

Crack is of little/no concern, it seems, though will be keeping eye on
it. I'm sure I'll be spending lots of time here, searching past posts
and asking new questions, since I'll be getting a lot of stuff DIY'd
rather than paying a pro - lack of money due to house purchase!

But I wanted to say thanks to those who gave me some sound advice, and
blow raspberries at those who said don't touch it with a bargepole

I'm getting a bigger house in a quieter road with a much bigger garden
than I ever expected to be able to. If I'd been scared off as a first
time buyer by the crack/damp/woodworm issues, I'd still be frantically
trying to find a place to live before my current place was repo'd (crap
landlords in debt, hate them!).

As it is, I have 6 months to get the damp/woodworm sorted (though
leeway available on this, as long as I don't want to borrow any more
against the place) - woodworm's probably being done 2 days before the
furniture's moved up there, the rest I'll be DIY'ing if poss... and the
woodworm guy said the original damp and timber people were talking out
their a**es on the damp - he's happy to show me why he thinks I have
woodworm needing treatment too though, so we'll see if I believe him on
that :-)

Finally I'm joining the ranks of homeowners, and thus able to DIY in my
own house without having to hold back due to tenancy agreements!

I'll go read the FAQ once I'm and have net access again, but in the
mean time, what would people suggest (if it's not in the FAQ) as
essential toolkit for those emergency repair situations? I'm thinking
electrical/plumbing/drains - anything else that might not have occurred
though...

I have some of the basics (reasonable hammer drill, spanners,
adjustable spanner of some size or other, hammer etc, but probably not
a lot more than that - screwdrivers but generally the sort more used in
IT (pc sized to suitable for racking kit in comms rooms).

Oh, and a question straight off the bat:

I want to route coax up from the livingroom (front room) to the front
bedroom. And telephone and Cat5 cable from livingroom to back bedroom.

What's the best way to do this - coax up the internal wall, through teh
ceiling/floor? There's a solid brick wall between front/back half of
the house. Again, is it easiest to run cabling for telephone and cat5
up the wall, along ceiling/floor, through wall, and across back bedroom
floor and up at a convenient point through teh floor? Or route it out
the living room, up the stairs, around the landing/bathroom door, into
back bedroom that way?

I'm sure I'm not the first or the last to be wanting to do this :-)

And wireless would be nice but I want the AP up in the back bedroom,
and the internet will be in the front livingroom...

Velvet