Nice people thread part 8 - worth the wait

vivatifosi

PasturesNew wrote: »

They're capturing the transient stuff - tweets and forums/opinions.

It was on the news this morning - they're not making it available to the public .... unless you are SO interested that you get your bum into the British Library, actually have a BL lending card and have the time/care to sit in their building and read it. Which means.... waste of time.

archive.org FTW - I probably use archive about 10x a week!

I have a readers card for the British Library but don't use it very often. Archive.org on the other hand, is fantastic. I have been using it while on here this evening. Looking at an index of wills, saves me the cost of going for the enhanced Ancestry (the sort you can't get at the library). It is fab. I've started an index of the books that I've been using and the index already has over 300 entries on it. I love it, love it, love it... Yes, I know I can go to archive.org and use their index, but my index has my notes on the books I've been looking at as the search function doesn't work on everything.

zagubov

vivatifosi wrote: »

I have a readers card for the British Library but don't use it very often. Archive.org on the other hand, is fantastic. I have been using it while on here this evening. Looking at an index of wills, saves me the cost of going for the enhanced Ancestry (the sort you can't get at the library). It is fab. I've started an index of the books that I've been using and the index already has over 300 entries on it. I love it, love it, love it... Yes, I know I can go to archive.org and use their index, but my index has my notes on the books I've been looking at as the search function doesn't work on everything.

The great thing about archive.org is it saves dragging the time machine up from the cellar!

I use it to visit great sites which aren't on the internet any more.
Like this
and this
The great stuff on the internet is winking out faster than the luddites and vandals with the Bulk Eraser destroyed all the great TV of the 60s/70s.

Never let it happen again!:cool:

fc123

neverdespairgirl wrote: »

Just take a deep breath and remember how lovely it will be once it's all done?

The thing that nearly sunk my patience was curtains. Our building is a lovely converted factory, with massive, massive windows. Which is great, in a way.

Then we found out that no-one makes ready-made curtains in those sizes, and that the cost of getting them made would pay off Cyprus' overdraft.

So I decided to make them myself.

I did Isaac's bedroom first, he has mid-blue cotton with stars randomly positioned across them - he scattered them, when the curtains were done, and I added them.

Then I did the living room ones, purple-blue silk (a total bargain, it was £6 a metre from a Bethnal Green remnants warehouse). It needed an awful lot of material, though - the pair of curtains are, now they are drawn in at the top, 14ft wide and 11.5 ft long.

I've also done the spare room curtains, which are dark blue cotton - one pair for the windows, and one long one for the door to the "garden" (AKA, the world's smallest patio). I had to do these quickly, because after my parents sold their house in London, my mother stayed with us the night before and two nights after her sessions of chemotherapy.

Our bedroom still has a torn duvet cover elegantly tied on to the curtain poles. I need to choose and buy some material for our room, now that my nightmare 3 month trial's over.



You are a very brave woman. I'd never be comfortable anywhere near a white sofa, I just know I'd wreck it.

What do you have in mind in the end for the rest of the place?

The cost of curtains is quite gaga but it's more the cost of the labour on a custom size, especially if hand sewn, as it's UK labour cost. All the ready mades are costed @ 10p per hour labour rate as inported.

michaels wrote: »

White sofa...ha, ha, ha

Ha de ha to you too No kids zone down there as mine are big, the nieces and nephews will do day trips but I can keep them away from it (or they can sit on it for 5 minutes as a special treat) as it's 'for best' as PN's mum and mine used to say.:)

....except it may not happen as the vendor doesn't seem to understand what's involved in selling a house.


In a late night nutshell;

He's a beyond poor landlord, just milked the house out as an HMO for 11 years, no repairs, care or regard for the house at all.

He's seems to be stressed finacially.

He wanted to speak to us last week so we have chatted to him and we have got the impression he has never bought or sold a house in his life as he doesn't understand the procedure.
He accepted the offer 5 weeks ago and is now complaining that the sale should have completed by now.

The survey was delayed by 10 days as the tenant attacked the surveyor the 1st time he went in.

He complains about 'losing rent' until it's sold (except he still hasn't given the tenants notice yet), he doesn't understand why we wanted to do a survey and why are we 'bothering' with searches etc.
Then find out he hasn't instructed a solicitor yet as he doesn't want to pay a deposit..........not understanding that the reason nothing else has happened is our solicitor needs to have contact with his.

Yesterday he told the EA to out it back on the market (as an attempt to 'chase' us ?)......so OH spoke to him again and needed the patience of a saint as this guy is not the brightest button.


He said he would instruct a solicitor now OH had explained that nothing is going to happen unless he did but then guess what he asked......could he have half the sale in 'cash' as he didn't want to pay CG tax. Is this guy that thick?

Then he said ' but you are a cash purchaser so why not?' and OH just couldn't face explaining to him that it meant no mortage, not that we would go round with a bag of cash and swap it for the keys.


We think he inherited several places (all run as HMO's) .

TBH we are going to just go with the flow on this. If we exchange with tenants in situ (which looks likely) then completion won't be until they leave but if he fannies about and pulls out then there will be other places. We'll just sit tight, save more and keep looking.

neverdespairgirl

silvercar wrote: »

I've had lined curtains, but not interlined.

Some of my friends got curtains with pelmets and swags and tails and curly things years ago. Not my thing, I like plain curtains.

Interlined ones don't look frilly or anything. The interlining is a sort of fleecy layer between the curtain material and the lining. It does help them hang nicely, and improves the insulation quite a bit, but it's not a visual thing, really.

I am a wimp, I used a sewing machine entirely. In fact, I bought one for the purpose.

neverdespairgirl

I've just come across a photo I'd forgotten I had - Isaac aged 6 months, looking like a little angel, not like the baby-who-rarely-slept!

LydiaJ

silvercar wrote: »

This is attempt 2, attempt 1 was to open a Coventry account, succeeded only to find they won't take transfers today - even from other Coventry accounts. That wasted half an hour.

Glad you got it sorted. I thought the currently available Coventry one didn't accept transfers at all, not just today.

fc123 wrote: »

....except it may not happen as the vendor doesn't seem to understand what's involved in selling a house.

I am so glad you are buying this as a second home rather than your main residence, and that you're not in a chain. It means I can have a good laugh at your story, whereas if he was completely messing up your attempt to buy your main home, I wouldn't. Please do keep us posted as to what he does next. :rotfl:

Shelves are up. We have moved a lot of stuff around, and tired ourselves out so we haven't done as much as we should of making the kids tidy up the chaos they created while we were doing the shelves (well, she was doing the shelves and I was holding things as required), but that will wait. I am happy.

LydiaJ

neverdespairgirl wrote: »

I've just come across a photo I'd forgotten I had - Isaac aged 6 months, looking like a little angel, not like the baby-who-rarely-slept!

Awwwww.

Here's a similar one of mine:


[IMG]http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/<a href="<a href=http://s1098.photobucket.com/user/Lydia--J/media/IM000183.jpg.html&quot; target=_blank>http://s1098.photobucket.com/user/Lydia--J/media/IM000183.jpg.html"</a&gt; target="_blank"><img src="<a href=http://i1098.photobucket.com/albums/g370/Lydia--J/IM000183.jpg&quot; target=_blank>http://i1098.photobucket.com/albums/g370/Lydia--J/IM000183.jpg"</a&gt; border="0" alt=" photo IM000183.jpg"/></a>[/IMG]

PasturesNew

vivatifosi wrote: »

I have a readers card for the British Library but don't use it very often. Archive.org on the other hand, is fantastic. I have been using it while on here this evening. Looking at an index of wills, saves me the cost of going for the enhanced Ancestry (the sort you can't get at the library). It is fab. I've started an index of the books that I've been using and the index already has over 300 entries on it. I love it, love it, love it... Yes, I know I can go to archive.org and use their index, but my index has my notes on the books I've been looking at as the search function doesn't work on everything.

Well, I will never visit the British Library (no idea where it is, except London) .... and most of the country will never.... so it's pointless only being there (and 4 other libraries most people will also never get to in their lives).

I didn't know you could see wills in archive.

I've just spent an hour on openlibrary as I was after an oriental medieval technique that I tracked down to some obscure books from the middle of the 18th century .... as you do when you've got the power of the Internet in your lap.

vivatifosi

PasturesNew wrote: »

I didn't know you could see wills in archive.

So far for my research I've had to buy 2 wills from the National Archives, but have many more than that I've acquired the details of. Once you find the will on the index, if you plonk those details into the internet, quite often you'll find someone has updated the info as part of their search anyway. I think you're looking for a rarer surname than me, mine is more common, so finding everyone isn't easy. You may not even have to do this though.

Quite often local history societies have transcribed them etc... I use the wills indexes to make sure I've not missed any then google is my friend to see who has transcribed them. If I've got all the dates then I tend to find things that are more specific. I've also got a few full text wills from books on archive.org.

A lot of the other stuff I've put in my index are things like the Books of Visitation, biographies of worthies, books on trade guilds, etc. The thing I have on my side is that the Victorians loved family history, so they've done a lot of the spade work and now I can find about 70% of what I'm looking for on archive.org because it is out of copyright. It is fab. I'm looking for information from Tudor/Stuart times and there's so much to find.

As an aside, I'm really enjoying finding out about the period. I've been reading about the Pilgrimage of Grace and Catholic recusancy and it's absolutely fascinating. I'd never heard of them before, yet Henry VIII could so easily have been overthrown. We almost all study Tudors at school, but they don't teach us about the Pilgrimage of Grace - however we don't really study that much Stuart history and they teach us about the Gunpowder Plot. Bizarre.

vivatifosi

NDG, lydia, those pics are absolutely gorgeous. Having also met the offspring of michaels, can I please add to the list of common features of nice people that they produce absolutely beautiful sprogs?