Nice people thread part 4 - sugar and spice and all things

michaels

Oh no SS it is time to explore the wonderful world of gas and electricity tariffs plus switching bonuses, cashback etc etc - last week you gould move to a market leading fix and get £100 of free vouchers.Heating has been good since they managed to install the boiler properly though I am still waiting for the gas-safe certificate at which point I will get the Viessmann qualified installer in to 'commission' as that means I get 5 years warranty rather than 3 - also they may understand better about heating curves etc for the weather compensation and also how to figure out how to set a lower night time temperature.

Next Tuesday we have the surveyor coming round to do snagging, I feel a bit of a wimp not doing it myself, I'm sure DG could but having someone else do it should help prevent any argument with the builder over what is reasonable to expect. Then it is just loads of painting to do and some floors to cover, not sure what to do about the kitchen family room, it is half knocked though but some point in the future it will be fully knocked through and a new kitchen so it seems silly to floor it with anythign expensive for now. Also all the downstairs rooms the screed needs plenty of time to dry properly before laying wood floor.

Might have an agent round next week for their thoughts however...

Lydia I hope your bits get sorted soon. The 10% final payment we insisted on seems to be keeping our builder fairly keen even though he has gone nadly over on the final 6 weeks of the project (until then he was on schedule but now he is about 4 weeks behind).

LydiaJ

michaels wrote: »

Lydia I hope your bits get sorted soon. The 10% final payment we insisted on seems to be keeping our builder fairly keen even though he has gone nadly over on the final 6 weeks of the project (until then he was on schedule but now he is about 4 weeks behind).

I've always been intending to give my builder a bonus at the end. Everyone I know who's used him says he undercharges, which is why he gets into cashflow difficulties and takes on more work than he can realistically fit into the time. So what I'm doing now is just telling him about the extra in advance, and pegging it to finishing on time.

Hope yours is finished soon too.

neverdespairgirl

SingleSue wrote: »

The boys have Open Office on their laptop, only problem is it is not always compatible with the teachers software (even though it should be).

I've never had problems <touch wood>

Davesnave

I've very little use for fancy software, but I know a few young people, so if I want anything, I can have it. For example, I have Windows 7 Ultimate, but this computer's hard drive is getting creaky, so I probably won't bother.

I've a fairly old program for plant labelling that only backs-up on floppy disks and uses a parallel printer port. :eek: I'm about to invest in a secondhand office computer for that, as the one it's on now is also doddering along, its Windows 98 OS full of holes. As a previous customer, I could get an updated version of the program for a 'bargain' price of about £300, but that's 4x more than the computer will cost!

Davesnave

SingleSue wrote: »

Think it will work out cheaper than a prepayment meter anyway.....

I think it has to. Great news anyway.

Davesnave

The last hole I dug was good, so the foundations here are probably OK for another floor.

I'm banking on knocking-down the part-integral garage and improving the facade to get through planning, but it could be tight.
Our council planners dislike bungalows in the countryside, so that's in our favour. They are also quite 'flexible' compared with
the neighbouring authority.

LydiaJ

Davesnave wrote: »

The last hole I dug was good, so the foundations here are probably OK for another floor.

I'm banking on knocking-down the part-integral garage and improving the facade to get through planning, but it could be tight.
Our council planners dislike bungalows in the countryside, so that's in our favour. They are also quite 'flexible' compared with
the neighbouring authority.

It must be the day for the NP to get good news, then. Hope the planning goes through OK. Do keep us posted so we can follow your story.

PasturesNew

Got an interview for a low pay job later this morning.... I doubt I'll get it as they'll be hung up on my past jobs/income and probably will choose some "local mum" instead. For me it's just round the corner and is in an industry I am keen to learn more about from the perspective of materials/recognition ... so it'd be a big "free course" in what's what. It's a manual job, picking and packing... but their product range is something I wish to handle and become more "automatically familiar" with.

As I say, won't get it

As a "proper job" it'd suck as it doesn't pay enough to pay rent/bills at all, but I'd be using it to further my knowledge within the industry.

For a "local mum" the rate of pay's high/fabulous as they're underpinned by so many benefits or they'd have a second income to the household, so they'd still be loaded. If there were any commuting costs then I'd not consider it even for the experience as commuting is a pain and expensive (spent £1000 keeping my car on the road in the past 2 months as it's needed all new tyres, all new brakes and a big chunk of exhaust).

Anyway .... I have a knack of spectacularly crashing and burning by saying the most ridiculous things under interview pressure

lostinrates

Davesnave wrote: »

The last hole I dug was good, so the foundations here are probably OK for another floor.

I'm banking on knocking-down the part-integral garage and improving the facade to get through planning, but it could be tight.
Our council planners dislike bungalows in the countryside, so that's in our favour. They are also quite 'flexible' compared with
the neighbouring authority.

Eco/green measures are also looked upon kindly by most I understand. I think it helped our application that we had green measures on the application.

The problme here was more the council policies for building control not matching the listed building ones. The two depts didn't communicate (in fact we still haven't resolved the tree issue one way or another, so that will have to be looked at next year). Then when one went off work with stress for six weeks we had a huge delay. Although the delays and ineptitude in their inhouse cooridiantion was frustrating, ultimately the planning process was not what I feared it would be at all and wouldn't put me off doing it again. I think thats fairly unusual for people dealing with listed buildings to feel so close to the event, but honestly: i found that with sympathetic plans, and very thorough pre planning preparation we had an answer for all points raised. Parish level planning we didn't get a single negative comment. Phew.


Everyone with their super working heated hoses better watch out I don't turn up one day soon.

vivatifosi

PasturesNew wrote: »

Got an interview for a low pay job later this morning.... I doubt I'll get it as they'll be hung up on my past jobs/income and probably will choose some "local mum" instead. For me it's just round the corner and is in an industry I am keen to learn more about from the perspective of materials/recognition ... so it'd be a big "free course" in what's what. It's a manual job, picking and packing... but their product range is something I wish to handle and become more "automatically familiar" with....

....Anyway .... I have a knack of spectacularly crashing and burning by saying the most ridiculous things under interview pressure

Pastures, you're talking yourself out of it before you even go along. Stress in the interview what you know about the firm and how keen you are to learn about the industry and what you will be doing. If your competitors aren't as interested as you it will show in the interview and they won't have done the same research.