First-time house renovation

jimbugalee

Oh we have that Stockton 3 which would be ok and we use smokeless coal on it

suisidevw

Hope everyones had a great weekend, good to read the progress, it sounds as though we are getting there as a collective!

Good news on our front! So, the room was completely plastered, bath in, and I came back from training yesterday to find nearly all the tiling done and it looks flipping brilliant. Tiling behind the toilet and sink today and toilet going in. Tomorrow will be the underfloor heating and floor tiles going down! So close now, we can't wait to have a shower, luckily Lowris gran and our pals have helped us out!

Pics tomorrow possibly, pretty manic at work on a zillion things but think you guys will appreciate!

suisidevw

PS, had another MSE result. We have a lot of wood coming down from the Rivers Taff and Ely into Cardiff Bay where I work and this gets dragged out but one of the teams at work and I've been told to help myself. Obviously I have so took 10 of so huge logs home, split them up over the weekend with an axe and have enough for a good few weeks. Going to build the stock!

moneysavingideas

When we did our home renovation something that we found useful was when we needed to get a quote by a qualified tradesperson do a specific job we got 4 quotes instead of the usual 3. This is because 1 tradesperson will either not bother to turn up, forget to actually give you the quote or be so busy that the final quote is exorbitant.

This means that you will still be left with 3 reasonable quotes to choose from and you won't waste time getting more quotes or money by paying more than the job is worth.

pawpurrs

The kitchen is starting to go in today,looks lovely :j
When its all done, pics will follow, if you want, but not sure whether to wait for the new cooker for pics?

littlerose12345

pawpurrs wrote: »

The kitchen is starting to go in today,looks lovely :j
When its all done, pics will follow, if you want, but not sure whether to wait for the new cooker for pics?

Exciting!! What kitchen have you gone for? Work in progress pics are always cool to look at ...

latecomer

@keith - love the stove

talking of kitchens, I've still not received the call about our kitchen units I was promised last monday but at the moment I dont really have time to deal with it and the kitchen is nowhere near ready to be installed anyway so it doesn't really matter.

Builders haven't done much recently and some of the work that was done I told them to redo. The head builder hasn't been there since friday when he was looking for payment despite being nowhere near the agreed goal. He obviously left shortly after we did as there was very little done apart from some extremely badly done plasterboarding which had been pushed into place despite being a little too large and hence had broken all the way along one edge. I told the guys yesterday to remove it and do it again. I've also told them that next time I find some work like that it will be the last thing they do. To be fair the guys doing the work are fine and understand where I'm coming from but they have to do as they are told by the boss.

So he will be getting a final warning next time I see him as we've had enough of the constant poor quality work and deviations from the spec and plans. He wasn't on site this morning due to the snow we've had which will be the the next excuse for things not being done.

pawpurrs

littlerose12345 wrote: »

Exciting!! What kitchen have you gone for? Work in progress pics are always cool to look at ...

Hand built to my own design

lisal0u

Hi Everyone,

Glad to see lots of progress going on!

Nothing to report from me really. Went through the horrible task of sorting out our finances last night! Not good! We wont be spending any more money for a while!

We had to resort to using credit cards near the end and this is the debt I desperately want rid of! Been looking on the debt free wannabe board for advice!

Im going to write to the credit card companies and ask them to reduce the interest rates and see what happens! Kitchen is paid off in June and car in November so by the end of the year it'll be much better!

Have you got any useful advice on this? I know its a bit off topic but it makes me feel better to talk about it!

Lisa

latecomer

think what you need is a 0% balance transfer card - check out the credit card board if you have a good credit history. If your credit rating isn't great then maybe try your own bank first. If thats not likely then what about a loan to pay off the cards? you would still pay interest but the rates should be a lot lower than credit card rates.