Daydream thread continues.....

lostinrates

Davesnave...hope you see this....

Saw the first swallow of the year this evening, swooping.

You thing they would want a rest, noT to do aeronautics for fun.

rozeepozee

Me too LIR! There's an ancient nest in the front of our bungalow, so I hope they come back - do they do that?

Bad-ish news on the build. Got the costs back from the QS and they just do not compute in logical terms. That is, what the architect has proposed does not make economical sense. It looks like it's back to the drawing board.

I thought I'd be gutted if we couldn't have the lovely design he suggested but I've surprised myself and gone all Buddhist I'm not bothered about having a fancy house. What we've bought is enough. In fact, I'd rather live in the caravan on our land than in the "open prison" (as I once referred to it when I wanted to follow my heart and my friends were trying to persuade me of my madness) that is the very swanky pad in the city.

lostinrates

rozeepozee wrote: »

Me too LIR! There's an ancient nest in the front of our bungalow, so I hope they come back - do they do that?

Bad-ish news on the build. Got the costs back from the QS and they just do not compute in logical terms. That is, what the architect has proposed does not make economical sense. It looks like it's back to the drawing board.

I thought I'd be gutted if we couldn't have the lovely design he suggested but I've surprised myself and gone all Buddhist I'm not bothered about having a fancy house. What we've bought is enough. In fact, I'd rather live in the caravan on our land than in the "open prison" (as I once referred to it when I wanted to follow my heart and my friends were trying to persuade me of my madness) that is the very swanky pad in the city.

Is the house habitable? I honestly think living in it for a while could change plans. We have here. Sometimes what makes sense on paper really doesn't in practice. Our bedroom the architect could not understand why w want as master when the extention goes in....views will be better from those rooms, but we like the 'feel' and our plans might let us have both east light and west light, depending what we do woth the bathroom. Not living here we would have gone for the better view, living here the feel of our room is right for us. Lots of other examples of this too.

Itismehonest

Ooo I shall have to keep an eye out tomorrow to see if the swallows have arrived here, too.
The birds were making a real racket at dusk tonight but I didn't notice that distinctive "chatter" that swallows have.
lol - If they are here, though, I may not have to look - I'll hear. They start early in the morning.

I'm sorry to hear the build costs don't compute, rozee. Building can be horrendously expensive & it always costs more in real life than first quoted, too.
LIR is right. We spent a year living here before we started any work at all. It's surprising how your ideas change as you learn more about the place.

alfie_1

ooooooooo im late on tonite and think iv missed you all...:(

i had a lie in this morning

took son over to purchase car early afternoon

then we went through a box full of old photos that i had hoarded as son asked if i had any pics of him as a baby. well we were rolling around laughing at some of them :rotfl: he was so excited that he had, as he put it "ammunition" ,on his long term mates
i think they may have a surprise on thier faceybook pages when he puts junior pics of them up to allsorts...:rotfl: i must admit we did a lot of then exciting things when he was young [considering i was in an era of "oooo a single parent !?].. before he was 11 he had been to ibiza,cyprus,greece,france,florida,sri lanka and all over GB. i dragged him off to horse fairs, animal venues/auctions etc.
ive had a great weekend of mother/son chat ,laughs and discussions.:T we do get on well but ive always been very open with him and let him "do his thing" so he learns and iv "been there" to help when needed. lucky for me hes never embarrased to talk to me..;)

anyway thats my proud mum moment...:rotfl:

CTC...glad you like the poem..do you think it suitable /too long for this site..??

if anyone has a sense of humour with regards flatulence then i will PM you the poem :rotfl::rotfl: let me know .

CTC....if they hatch then i will always let you have some geese very cheap and its an excuse for me to be just plain NOSEY but i want a bonfire BBQ please in return ...:p

Davesnave

COOLTRIKERCHICK wrote: »

.. got the fire lit again tonight...

what will be going in this polytunnel Dave?

We've had the woodburner on every evening and the Aga's still going as well, three weeks after the date we turned it off last year.

The polytunnel is a bit like a new house, because we don't know how we'll organise it inside yet. We'll put all the toms and peppers in there, and we have loads of second hand aluminium benching, so there will be his 'n hers work areas, a propagation bench....oooh all sorts. The thing is, although it's big now, we know it will shrink as soon as we start gardening properly in there!

lostinrates wrote: »

Davesnave...hope you see this....
Saw the first swallow of the year this evening, swooping.

Yes, they've been here a couple of days, but not in any numbers yet.

Managed to persuade two wood pigeons to go somewhere else to nest, rather than the barn, but not before they'd dumped huge piles of twigs all over the floors, upstairs and down. I suppose they either do this and collect it up later, or more likely, the male keeps bringing the female 'gifts.'

A female blackbird is nesting in the workshop in an unassailable place, but when the babies hatch, I will need to leave the door open....Methinks they won't fly out as easily as Mum & Dad flew in....

Davesnave

rozeepozee wrote: »

Bad-ish news on the build. Got the costs back from the QS and they just do not compute in logical terms. That is, what the architect has proposed does not make economical sense. It looks like it's back to the drawing board.

I thought I'd be gutted if we couldn't have the lovely design he suggested but I've surprised myself and gone all Buddhist I'm not bothered about having a fancy house. What we've bought is enough.

Keep architects on a tight rein! Ours works hand in hand with a builder, so while we'll get several quotes, he knows it's no good drawing up something we can't pay for.

Apparently, quotes are coming in all over the place though, probably because some builders are still busy and others are desperate. Of course, we won't want the desperate ones!
There was a line in our Panto where the Sheriff, cold-called by Anglian Castle Improvements, responded with, "Clear off, there's enough dodgy builders in this parish already!"

It got a huge laugh on all 3 nights!:rotfl:

We'll contact our architect tomorrow. He's on draft 3 of a plan, but we think we can still improve on it significantly by spending a little more....say £7k or so, going on £/m2 averages.
Fortunately, he isn't the sort who minds the customers "putting him right."

However, like you, we might well find that 'going up' is altogether too costly, so we're going to spend a bit more and ask for his take on 'going out' instead. It won't cost much to create a Plan B which can be hacked around/quoted on too. Getting the full view would be great, but not if it means living on beans for ever. We are still quite flexible about this.

rozeepozee

Davesnave wrote: »

However, like you, we might well find that 'going up' is altogether too costly, so we're going to spend a bit more and ask for his take on 'going out' instead. It won't cost much to create a Plan B which can be hacked around/quoted on too. Getting the full view would be great, but not if it means living on beans for ever. We are still quite flexible about this.

This pretty much sums it up for us. We don't like debt and we don't want to be worrying about every penny spent. We can go outside and get the great view and we've already paid for it!

The footprint of the bungalow is really generous. Going up means we will have a good annex too. If we don't go up, that's what will be sacrificed, but I think we'll still manage five bedrooms. It certainly seems that going out will be cheaper. And we now have the caravan for over flow accommodation.

As far as living in the place first is concerned, I can see totally that massive advantages that there will be. However, I'm not sure we can really make it habitable. Not with children, anyway. It hasn't been modernised since the sixties, is pretty damp, floor coverings shot, probably an unsafe electricity system. The money we'd have to spend on making it habitable would be thrown away....

The annoying thing is that we've done some things that we wouldn't have done to the place because we've been working on false premises. We've definately learnt a lot! :cool:

There's a lot to think about. Back to the old drawing board,as they say.

One of the few positives about the building process at the moment is that the architect is working on a fixed fee basis.

Oh, and the potential reduction in VAT if we haven't lived there for two years - if we become eligible for that....

Itismehonest

It's usually cheaper to build new than do any sort of conversion.
In the late 80s it cost £60K to convert an existing building (outside untouched other then a few doors/windows added) but by the turn of the century we were still paying fractionally less than that for a 2-storey extension complete with stone-facing to match the rest of the house.
So explore all the possibilities. Some should be considerably cheaper.
I'm not sure how it works cost-wise to pull down & start again (PP allowing, of course).

I wasn't woken to the sound of chattering so I guess, if the swallows are here, they must be in small numbers & so ruddy cold that their beaks are chattering but the song isn't coming out

Still waiting for the oil delivery. Brrrrrrr...... and it's drizzly so another day indoors for us.

Davesnave

Itismehonest wrote: »

Still waiting for the oil delivery. Brrrrrrr...... and it's drizzly so another day indoors for us.

Drizzle? Pah! You're on the lucky side of the Moor today. :cool:

It's peeing down here, and has been since before dawn.

.......I'd love some drizzle.