Wherediditallgo’s ‘path to enlightenment’ bankruptcy diary

wherediditallgo

betterlatethannever wrote: »

Glad you had such a good new year WDIAG..i'm now wondering if i should offer to be your manager, sounds like you have a career ahead of you in singing.
I was dicussing 'Men' with a friend the other day and we were trying to decide at what point do you tell them your a BR its hardly first date or pillow talk stuff. I wonder if they would then run a mile when you told them?
I did this years ago, when dating a guy who told me he was about to lose his house and go BR and i dumped him:eek: what a cow i am. But then i didn't realise what BR was all about and had all sorts of horrible images of him. It wouldn't have worked anyway but i should have given him more of a break.

I'll be telling them once we've gone past the newness of "staying over at his/mine" stage & once he's "refreshed the parts other beers cannot reach", to recall a popular advert from years ago.

I see no reason for me to be discussing my money or where it goes with someone before that. I take relationships quite seriously - while I wouldn't want to keep it secret if we seemed to be getting serious, I wouldn't be telling my all after only a few dates either. I wouldn't be expecting any major details from him about his financial affairs either. Hopefully, by the time I tell him he'll know enough about me to accept it (after all, he could owe as much or more than I did, but might not have done anything about it). If he doesn't accept me because I've been BR, it's his loss - there are far worse things I could have done & been than that.

wherediditallgo

5 Jan - Hot-footed it to Argos today, & managed to get one of the Black & Decker electric handsaw & sander duo packs mentioned on the Grabbit board here. I was surprised there were any left, as it's a few days since the original post - I think I probably got one of the last ones in my area, as every branch for miles around came up "out of stock".

I'm very pleased - I couldn't afford to put carpet on my stairs or the landings especially as the floorboards need smoothing down first, plus there's some rather rough plastering about thanks to me getting a bit carried away with the polyfilla , so the sander will make that a lot easier to deal with. I also still haven't been able to chop up some pallets I got for nothing last year to make a small dividing fence, so the saw will make light work of that (I had visions of me ending up with a right arm like Popeye's if I'd used an ordinary handsaw ). I'm going to keep some of the wood back to make some battens/shelves for my dvd mountain. Now I've got this kit, I feel I can actually get these jobs done. :j

At the rate I'm going, I'll have this place finished by 2010 :eek: - if I had a credit card or credit facilities, this place would have been done ages ago. Thank goodness I'm not working to any other deadline except my own.

tigerfeet2006

Sounds like a fun weekend!!!:D

wherediditallgo

tigerfeet2006 wrote: »

Sounds like a fun weekend!!!:D

Oh, it's enough fun for me to get the thing. Doing the actual work will have to stay for another time.

wherediditallgo

6 Jan - I've just sanded the landings & they look great! :j Whoever lived here before had painted them & the stairs, & several coats of magnolia later it had started to chip. I can't face doing the stairs today, but the landings are the hardest part anyway. The dust was incredible though - even though I hoovered before I started & dampened the floorboards, the dust that came up just from the floorboards vibrating as well as from the paint that was being removed was something else - thank goodness I'd thought to put on a face mask.

In some ways, going BR is harder for a woman trying to run a home who doesn't have a man around to help. I decided to split from my partner in 2005 - we both had money problems & maybe it would have been easier to stay together, but I couldn't do it. I moved, & then had to learn DIY as I couldn't afford to pay someone to do jobs for me. In the time since then, I've learned how to hang blinds, hardboard floors, lay carpets, line walls, paint without leaving streaks, fill cracks in walls & a whole host of other things around my home. A man going into a DIY shop doesn't get a second look even if he hasn't got a clue what he's doing, but a woman going in asking for rawlplugs or foam filler does! I've had to do it, because I've not had the money to pay for these jobs to be done - I was nervous at first, but I've since been in there so often that they don't look at me now, perhaps a sign I've been accepted into a traditionally male world. I've also become better at negotiating with workmen, so that they don't see me as a single woman who's an easy target. Five years ago, if I'd wanted the floorboards done, I'd have either hired a sander (which costs more per day than I got to buy the sander for) or booked a contractor to do it.

I feel so much more capable now - I thought going BR would free me of my debts, but it's also freed me of thinking I can't do certain things, & if I have to pay for something to be done I'm more confident about getting it done at a good price. The work I've done will never win any industry awards, but I've done it myself & if I have to do the same things again in the future, I'll be able to draw on my past experience & hopefully do it better next time around.

rog2

Sounds positive, wdiag - my wife sanded our stairs, and banisters, and I have to say they look great (previously had about 20 coats of white gloss paint :eek: ).
You're certainly going to get your money's worth out of that sander. :T :T

betterlatethannever

:T Well done you! i'm impressed, i don't even know what a sander looks like:o nor can i do the most basic of tasks:o When i had to put up a coat hook recently i superglued it to the wall:eek: it worked until i hung a heavy coat on it and it fell off the wall, bringing half the wallpaper with it! I then superglued the wallpaper back up..............
Maybe you can rip up that lino in your bathroom that got ruined and sand the boards in there?

jobby_2

hi guys
Having moved to a semi derelict farmhouse in the middle of woods back of nowhere have now learned how to render and plaster - extremely good exercise and very therapeutic -but leave soft furnishings to other half - bought a sander recently and its fab!!!

Am definitely acquiring a fondness for power tools!

Not been around for ages and interesting to see and hear everyone's progress

Life post BR continues, good in parts I think is the key phrase!

Jobby

wherediditallgo

19 Jan - Have spent the last 36 hours being unbelievably sick. 4am yesterday morning I woke up with awful stomach pains & had to run to the loo. I spent all of yesterday going back & forth at 5-minute intervals (sometimes had to go straight back there just after lying down after the previous session :eek:) & managed to eat only a bio yoghurt & two biscuits all day. My joints ache, I feel hot, sweaty & exhausted, & I've lost 3lbs. :eek: I'm not in pain now, but I'm too scared to go outside the front door in case I suddenly find myself desperate for the loo - I rang my GP yesterday, described my symptoms & was told not to come in for an appointment (can't get there anyway) as it could be the Norovirus - one of my colleagues has been off over a week with it, & he's lost over 1/2 a stone from not being able to keep anything down or in.

So I'm stuck in the house for at least a few more days, walking/running the path of desperation between the loo & the couch or my bed. I definitely won't be going to my friend's engagement party tonight. I was looking forward to it, but I'm not taking the risk that something disastrous happens....

tigerfeet2006

Aw! big hugs to you. I've had that as well this week, today is the first day I have felt half human. Don't try and eat anything and constantly sip cooled, boiled water for a day or two. I had great fun with it and trying to feed the baby :rolleyes:

Hope you feel better soon.