First-time house renovation

suisidevw

Videogames sounds interesting!

What sort of restaurant TM? Been in F & B all your life?

I still don't know what my career is goign to be........ enjoy life at the moment and team and where I work but it's not my career by any means. It pays the mortgage and we get loads of holiday and time off but I do live for weekends and evenings at home with wife, dog, friends, house and garden!

suisidevw

PS, I want to be retired by 50! Not really sure how that'll happen at the present time unless someone dies and leaves us a lot of cash which would obviously be bittersweet!

TomsMom

suisidevw wrote: »

Videogames sounds interesting!

What sort of restaurant TM? Been in F & B all your life?

Small family restaurant on the coast, 34 seater, varied menu but steaks and lamb dishes ('cos we're in Wales ) were specialities. I'd make all the home made soups and some puds (and work like a dog behind the scenes with laundry/admin etc), d-i-l made some of the dishes, as did TD, DS was the steak whizz! We had the restaurant for 15 years. Previously I'd always been a secretary. TD was (1) Telephone Engineer when BT was the Post Office!, (2) Manager of TV/whitegoods shop, (3) Fireman until accident invalided him out, (4) Building Manager for large firm of property landlords in Birmingham until he was made redundant. We went into F & B after TD was made redundant and at almost 50 couldn't find anyone to employ him despite willing to do anything. DS was at catering college so we bought the restaurant and employed him and his then GF (now wife) as chefs, OH was used to working with public and I was very used to organising/admin so we made a fairly good team. Fortunately DS had trained in ceramic tiling prior to catering college (but had been made redundant, hence retraining) and had always fitted some tiling in as well as working for us, and he has gone back to this full time since we sold the restaurant, working for himself.

I still don't know what my career is goign to be........ enjoy life at the moment and team and where I work but it's not my career by any means. It pays the mortgage and we get loads of holiday and time off but I do live for weekends and evenings at home with wife, dog, friends, house and garden!

I can't honestly say whether a "career" as such is the be all and end all. My brother, one year older than me, has worked as a civil engineer since doing a sandwich course at Uni, working for a city council, never moving to another employer. He has had to reapply for his own job two or three times during reorganisations and, because of his age, a much younger person was appointed senior to him because he came cheaper!!!! This person was nowhere near as qualified as my bro nor did he have as much experience and was constantly asking him what to do or how to handle a situation, until my bro refused to advise him any more. My bro has ended up hating his job. Funny thing is, he could have retired with a nice pension after 40 years' service, he's been with them since age 18 (when he started his sandwich course) and is now 63 but still works for them, still complaining, still hating going to work every day. Stupid s*d. I know what I'd be doing if I had his pension pot!!!!!

What I mean is, if whatever you are doing right now does not pee you off, brings in enough money for you to live how you want to live and be happy, then go with the flow. Life's too short (and we've found that out over the past two years!) so just do what's right for you for the moment and enjoy!

Vale_Eden

Hi All

We've managed to find some insurance at last!! It's with a company called Intasure, who specialise in second homes/holiday homes. As we are yet to move into it (we need the renovation to take place first!) they will cover us for everything whilst the renovation works haven't commenced which is better than the others as they would only cover us for FLEA right from the start as the property is unoccupied. Once they have they will reduce the cover to FLEA plus storm and public liability. The excess is quite a bit higher once the renovation starts, but may look into whether we can get insurance to cover the excess just in case!! Anyway feel a bit happy about the cover now.

We're meeting an architect at the property tonight to have a walk round the house and a chat. Has anyone else had experience of using architects for their renovation works. We did think about using someone to just draw up plans (we are looking at a kitchen extension plus some remodelling of the rooms) but think someone with some design input would help us.

To ginvzt we are also looking into and andrew-b we are also looking at the possiblity of VAT reduction as the property has been empty for over two years. It seems to be applicable to some things and not others (it says 'Other than installing goods that are not building materials, you can reduced-rate any works of repair, maintenance (such as redecoration), or improvement (such as the construction of an extension or the installation of double glazing) carried out to the fabric of the dwelling.'). Have a look at the info on hrmc website, search for HMRC Reference:Notice 708. I haven't looked into it fully but think the builder/contractor who is VAT registered you use has to sort it for you??

andrew-b

I don't work anymore..after two degrees i took early "retirement" at 25 from software engineering (first in industry then share dealing) by which time i was on £30k a year. Have been around a bit since first selling weight loss products for a bit of income then self-employed website design and hosting. So i went from comfortably rich to poor ..which one's better....well i'm happier now than 10 years ago when i walked out the office the last time - even though we're on just my wife's income at half what i used to earn!

aliasojo

andrew-b wrote: »

I don't work anymore..after two degrees i took early "retirement" at 25 from software engineering (first in industry then share dealing) by which time i was on £30k a year. Have been around a bit since first selling weight loss products for a bit of income then self-employed website design and hosting. So i went from comfortably rich to poor ..which one's better....well i'm happier now than 10 years ago when i walked out the office the last time - even though we're on just my wife's income at half what i used to earn!

HA! I knew there was a reason you could work Sketchup better than me. :rotfl:

andrew-b

That might be why ..though my coding is better than my design..
Trying to come up with a plan for when the weather improves to get as much of the shed panels painted as possible in the minimum time yet keep them dry for the 2 days drying time. I've had the shed all week and not even opened the can of paint so it's really frustrating not being able to get on with it. Hoping to throw 4 of us at it on sunday if the weather allows. The least i need to get done is paint the underside of floor, topside of roof and all the overlaps plus the various smaller timbers that all need painting before installation. Ideally i'd like to get all the outside done but it's been suggested that we leave it till after installation. The inside part of the panels will probably get left until once it's constructed. The biggest complication is i can only deal with 9-10 panels at a time without stacking them or leaning against fences whilst also keeping the dog fenced out of harms way - but there's 30 panels and it looks like i have a 2 days timeframe of decent weather over the weekend so something has to give!

stolt

suisidevw wrote: »

What does everyone on this forum do? Are you retired? Work in which industry etc? I can picture a fair few of you just from text that you've written but no doubt I'm well off!

I work fulltime for Welsh Assembly Government in Facilities Management for all of our buildings

just come on here to see what was going on, and loadsa posts.... nowadays i work in shipping hazardous chemicals worldwide and also food grade products, such as wine, and whisky etc to the far east. Before that I had a really good exciting life and had great friendship with a businessman who later became my brother in law!!! I use to accompany him across the world but mostly in the middle east as a personal assitant my wife liked to call it, untill some idiots in abu Dhabi spolied everything. Had many good times and plenty of worrying times. Now i'm stuck in a office but i know that the only risk that i wont return back to my family each night is the car journey home. I still get involved with the middle east, i now ship aviation fuel to the americans for the military to bomb them!!!
All this talk about retirement, seems ages away and perhaps i shouldnt be wishing my life away but i never thought about pensions etc in my twenties, and now im 35 its now hit me across the face saying you have no pension when you retire......

anyway, weekend nearly here, garden still on my mind , tomorrow i've got another 6 x 6ft bamboos being delivered, 6 zinc 50cm cube planters, 1 ton of compost soil, and these are going down the side of the house to give a bit of form and follow through the bamboo theme. Missus ordered some more chadeliers to go in the playroom bu tthey arrived damaged so got to go back.

good luck with everything you have planned for the weekend.

aliasojo

suisidevw wrote: »

......but I do live for weekends and evenings at home with wife, dog, friends, house and garden!

Ah no....in my head you're a female called Susie. :rotfl:

*Note to self: read user id's properly*


I'm a lady who lunches after winning millions on the lottery.




(That's a lie btw, I'm a stay at home carer for my son who has disabilities.)

suisidevw

Nice to picture more about a load of you now, thanks !

Definitely not a female, it was an old car club I was part of 'suiside VW' Here's me below with our dog alfie taken last month before the garden 'grew. Pics of that over the weekend hopefully