Mortgage Free - so good they'll do it twice! Wynnvegas aiming for the big house

babyb06

Glad you like the Ipad - can't believe how much you have 'saved' versus itunes downloads!

I love the bathroom tiles - can't wait to see the finished product

Babyb

Froggy-G

Greetings Billy! :j

Clearly Moyra has good taste in tiles.. You picked the exact same floor tiles than ours :D:D:D
Glad the Ipad is working well..We will be looking at a new PC / laptop by the end of the year..That will be a present to ourselves if we achieve our target by the end of 2011..;)

Thinking about your spare room, I thought you would have gone all out with a water bed -Vegas style!
Will you be hanging some of your jigsaw art in that room?

OH's got a question for Moyra! Is that Primrose yellow, the colour chosen for the spare bedroom? (by the way thhis question was dictated to me - nothing to do with me, am just the messenger )

Cheers
Froggy :cool:

wynnvegas

Hi RT,

Still haven't seen the iPad2 first hand but it being lighter surely isn't a massive selling point. It's not as if the original and best iPad weighs you down! I would normally have done the same so as not to invalidate the warranty but we have a contract with a Company up here that acts as the main Apple repair centre in Scotland and I know the CEO pretty well so I've convinced myself that, should anything go dramatically wrong, I can fire it across to get it quickly fixed. I'm also led by the fact that all of my iStuff has yet to break down, including the 512mb iPod which must be kicking on 6 years old - it lives as a fifth iPod in the car with a random selection of songs that Moyra and I agree on. She has her iPhone, her gym iPod and I have my iPhone, walking and gym iPod and the car iPod. In saying that, I've been properly getting into my podcasts of late so I haven't used my gym iPod quite as much as I used to.

Cheers,

Billy

wynnvegas

Hi babyb,

Knocked through another £50 yesterday with the Installeous App. I think I've downloaded all the sport, simcity-esque and racing games for me, all the hidden object and word games for Moyra, all the board games for us both (the game of life being a classic that we had a laugh with yesterday). A lot of the iPad specific ones are coming in at £7.99 each which is just ridiculous so Apple can damn their eyes on that front. The only downside is that with the downloadathon, I haven't actually had much time to play with it. Did get most of the way through Limitless yesterday so I'll finish that tonight. It was rudely interrupted by the Barcelona match last night.

Cheers,

Billy

wynnvegas

как вы делая Froggy,

I got those a good two or three years ago from Homebase when they were on some sort of offer. Hopefully they'll look good when they're down. The joiner/PM knows his stuff so I've every faith we'll get a really cracking result when it's done. I've no idea if my PC is worth keeping or not just now. I'll chuck it to our workshop in here for a wee bit of cleaning and upgrading to see what their view of it is and keep it in the spare room as, if it has even basic web browsing functionality on it, it's probably not worth throwing out (look at me saving a bit of space in the local landfull!). I'm going with the laptop / iPad / AppleTV (assuming the reviews come back positive), fancy iPad projection specs / iPhone / iPod / PC as a backup plan. I could be tempted with a bigger, better new telly and a surround sound thingy which pipes different things to different rooms (having seen the remote control app on the iPad) but, with all of that sounding like a bit of an effort, I'll likely leave a lot of the new fangled technical wizardry for the big house. The last thing we want to do is get ourselves so happy with the squalour that we don't work up the energy to move!!

I haven't looked at the bed options yet. I had initially thought about just sticking another king size bed in there and leaving it for visitors (we get a lot because we're near Edinburgh Airport). We were talking the other day about the different rooms we've had in Vegas and we came across this photo - http://i826.photobucket.com/albums/zz190/wynnvegas/DSCN3461.jpg - of our !!!!!! star suite in Vegas last year. Probably not one to recreate in a house that's going to be sold!! The couch come double bed combo seems to be the way ahead just now but the one Moyra has pointed out is in Argos which I'm not overly keen on - Ikea and Argos are on my "never enter again unless absolutely necessary" list alongside most of the local restaurants. We have yet to get a lot of the other jigsaws framed but that's on a "to do soon" list. I think we've got about 8 that we're planning to frame and then hang so the place will be filled with jigsaws of our travels. Haven't a clue on the paint and I don't think Moyra has either. We've to go shopping for it on Saturday after a haircut, badminton and floor shopping. At some point this weekend, I have to completely clear the spare room and the loft for the bathroom being done so there won't be a massive amount of time for anything other than house stuff.

Cheers,

Billy

wynnvegas

Morning All,

Had a properly productive morning. It's amazing what an early start can do for a day! Cleared the majority of my workload for the day, organised my London / Birmingham trip for the week after next and managed to get through the majority of my podcast backlog. As much as I'm for all things moneysaving, I've never had a problem with the TV license which surprises me as I'd struggle to recall the last time I watched anything on the BBC. Where the BBC does come into it's own is on the radio. My normal station of choice is 5Live but, through the podcast options on iTunes, BBC4 appears to have some genuinely quality output. Between the comedy stuff and the moneybox / moneymatters programmes, I'm well impressed. Add in a few 5Live staples like fighting talk and the naked scientist and they're welcome to whatever it now costs for a license. Maybe they should do an opt out for the TV. I'm a bit of a snob when it comes to decent oratory and writing and I can't understand in any way the appeal of things like Eastenders and Coronation Street. From what little of it I've seen in my life, the writing is embarrassing and the acting isn't any better. Moyra's mum is a massive Casualty fan - that's another one I can't make any sense of. The only soap I'll gladly watch is Passions. It's an American number (so only ever two people in any one slowly zooming in shot) but the plots and acting are so bizarre that it's brilliant fun. If they don't jump the shark at least a dozen times in every episode, there's something far wrong. No idea how I got onto this rant but I'll stop now!

I'm properly jealous about the goings on in Vegas just now. There's a slot machine web forum where people share their stories, pictures and videos about the latest games, wins and losses. We're both slot machine fanatics in Vegas (largely as the table games are still there as "proper" gambling which we're too scared to have a go at) and the moderator on that forum has arranged a group get together in Vegas today and tomorrow. It was going to be in the summer which the four of us could have joined in with but April won out by a single vote! They've managed to arrange reduced rooms, quality gift bags from most of the slot manufacturers, a good bit of free play per person and, for a time, the entire high limit area where everyone sticks in $50 toward a few group efforts at one of the big £100 a pull machines. I'd have loved to be involved for a couple of days if only to see some of them have at the machines in the big way that they do (sometimes $10 a spin which can quickly suck a couple of thousand away on a bad run!) but I'll live vicariously through them for the next couple of days. Nothing like it to get me in the mood for Vegas in the summer!

Cheers,

Billy

wynnvegas

Morning All,

NBW update - the bathroom has gone between me leaving the house this morning and now. As at this morning, the bathroom and spare room were as below:

http://i826.photobucket.com/albums/zz190/wynnvegas/83c2ee5b.jpg
http://i826.photobucket.com/albums/zz190/wynnvegas/01c05129.jpg
http://i826.photobucket.com/albums/zz190/wynnvegas/20c22843.jpg
http://i826.photobucket.com/albums/zz190/wynnvegas/a92ab0eb.jpg
http://i826.photobucket.com/albums/zz190/wynnvegas/a0eba58c.jpg
http://i826.photobucket.com/albums/zz190/wynnvegas/8e495d3d.jpg - The current Boiler in the kitchen - glad to get shot of it!
http://i826.photobucket.com/albums/zz190/wynnvegas/b313a2a8.jpg - Currently the hot water tank and towel cupboard - home to the new boiler soon
http://i826.photobucket.com/albums/zz190/wynnvegas/75b8d7f6.jpg - The wall that was there this morning between the bathroom and the spare room
http://i826.photobucket.com/albums/zz190/wynnvegas/b91f9f04.jpg
http://i826.photobucket.com/albums/zz190/wynnvegas/7c2ffaf8.jpg

I'll keep a diary of the goings on during the week. By Saturday morning, we should have everything done and dusted in the bathroom. By the end of the following week, the spare room should be more or less complete (excepting new furniture which we need to scout out).

This last week has been a manic frenzy of activity getting ready for the bathroom being done. The last minute decision to get the spare bedroom floored whilst we've got a joiner in the house meant an additional bit of running about at the weekend but we'll get settled back into a more sedate life (aided no end I'm sure by the jacuzzi bath!) as of next week. We did have a fairly decent clearout whilst answering the question "how much crap can two people accumulate over the course of a few years! I really need to sort out an eBay extravaganza once we've finished these rooms as we've got a good lot of stuff that's worth selling.

Good news on the money front - we should start being repaid this month by Moyra's parents for the acquired debt project so that will help. According to the income tax checker, I should also be nearly £120 a month better off as of this month. I can't see why but I won't argue. I just hope they've got it right as I've very little faith in HMRC having their act together.

On the skirt front, just phoned them. They're waiting on the belt coming in but that's all so I'll pick up the shoes and kilt pin today with the belt and buckle being the only outstanding items on the list. I'll do what I can to borrow a belt from the kilt shop to tide me over so I can get a view on how it looks from you good people.

Cheers,

Billy

MyMFDream

Billy how is the land quest doing?? Where is it you look for land?? I am starting to think we will need to build to get the space/layout we want

wynnvegas

Hi MFD,

Not brilliantly if I'm being honest. We've looked at half a dozen plots that are the right kind of size (c.2-3 acres) but it seems that getting anything with outline planning permission means accepting land that is well off the beaten track. Whilst we're quite happy going for somewhere a wee bit rural, I don't want to have future car choices dictated by the necessity of having a 4x4 to get down to the shop. We're more passively looking at the moment whilst we clear off our acquired debt so we'll hit it in a much more aggressive fashion come October. We're now 100% that we won't buy another house (unless it's one for knocking down to use the land that it sits on) as the grand design planning has us set in our grandiose aspirations now.

Where to look for land is a massive part of the problem. There are maybe half a dozen national sites where you can look for new houses but nothing comparable for land sale so you can go through a dozen websites with only some crossover to find a couple of plots on each. The quality of the sites and the information varies dramatically as well. Even specialist websites like plotfinder aren't brilliant - there may yet be a market for a national land register where people looking to self-build can filter to their desires.

Cheers,

Billy

MyMFDream

That is what I am finding but I wonderedif i was doing wrong somewhere. We haven't even started to plan or cost but our house wants just doesn't seem to exist in a complete package. I would have no issue buying if we could get what we ant but it looks impossible.

Plots near civilisation and in the area we are looking seem to have a maximum size of .75 acre with outline consents and I don't think we could get what we want from such a site, I would need to do some actual measuring and planning we want 5 good sized bedrooms say 5m x 5m each