Cheery's buttling diary: tea in one hand, plant pot in the other, running shoes on

Karmacat

Thanks starnac! Its the old "best of a bad job" thing, I'll run the figures to make sure it *is* the best of a bad job!

Cheery_Daff

Good plan KC

Don't envy you sorting out your pile of pensions starnac! :eek: Fortunately (?) I never had one before I was 30 so nothing to sort out!

Tis great when you've actually saved up the money to pay for stuff, isn't it? :j :j :j We've done that too - except we've saved £250 and it's only £190 :j :j :j Quite excited about deciding where to put the extra £60 :rotfl:

Cheery_Daff

Evening all (or I suppose it's actually tomorrow morning now! :eek: )

Two exciting things today

(1) I've discovered the Open University's free online courses Look here. Excellent fun - I made a HUGE list of all the ones I wanted to take, then realised that was actually, er, most of them and all FREE! Of course there's no qualifications, but I don't really need any more of those it's just fun to learn something new, and I like doing that in a structured way. Going to work my way through a few in the coming weeks :j

(2) Just been looking at the reports in YNAB It seems that so far this year

9% of my spending has been on travelling to work :eek:
8% on council tax
4% on gas and electric
4% on diesel
43% into the Patchwork Fund :money:

Of course, that Patchwork Fund percentage will go down as I make a lump payment at the start of the month and then other expenses will trickle for the next few weeks but even so, that's not a bad percentage to start with! :j Will check again at the end of the month :j

Right, I really MUST go to sleep - a day of DIY tomorrow! :eek:

starnac

Wow 43% patchwork is fantastic. Well done you x

Can you claim any of the travelling back or is that your normal commute?

Thanks for the OU link. I also like learning new things so might have a look at them. Although when I'll actually have time to do any of them I don't really know.

Do you still have snow cheery?

Cheery_Daff

It's' not snowed for ages, but it's also not warmed up so there's still plenty around on gardens, rooftops, ice in the middle of the roads, pavements like ice rinks... Main roads are clear but side roads just have clear tracks down the middle :rotfl: Getting a bit fed up of it now!

Nope, that travelling is all just my normal commute! :eek: £20.90 each day I go, and it's usually 2 days a week. Still, since I started using my foldy bike again I'm now saving myself about £40 a month in bus fares :money: so that's got to be good! :j

Today is a day of DIY and possibly a bit of cleaning, looking at the amount of muck revealed now the sun is shining :eek: Popping to a friend's for a cuppa, then to Wickes for supplies, then getting to work in the bathroom :j :j

Just hope I don't run out of momentum before I get back from the shop :rotfl:

Karmacat

Ug, the dust that's revealed when the sunshine comes in unexpectedly :rotfl::rotfl::rotfl: its a terrible thing!

Cheery_Daff

Tis indeed, although I'm certainly not going to be complaining about the sunshine! :j :j :j

Had a lovely morning chatting with friend and talking about books and writing Then a quick trip to the DIY shop for supplies and now waiting for Mr Cheery to dig the tiles out of the cellar so I can start attaching them to the bathroom wall :j

Might do before and after photos, it's such a momentous occasion! :rotfl: :rotfl:

Cheery_Daff

Well, second layer of plastering is on and the wall is looking (relatively) flat :j :j Well, as flat as it's going to be anyway :rotfl:

Renewed car insurance, and transferred the spare £60 to Patchwork Fund, which means we've added £1109 so far this year :j :j I was aiming for £5000 so we're already over 20% :j :j

Cheery_Daff

Evening gang :hello:

Just dashimg through to report I've now put the tiles on the wall and over an hour later they're still attached!! :j :j :rotfl: Looks great already and makes SUCH a difference from manky wall that was there before

Nicely frugal project too - to plaster the hole I used some (grey) exterior filler left over from building a garden wall a couple of years ago. Used 8 tiles from a random half box in the cellar left over from tiling the shower about 15 years ago.

I bought a £6 tub of multipurpose tile adhesive & grout from Wickes (only used half and won't need all of the other half just for grouting). Also bought nifty 2 in 1 gloop-raker and grout smoother tool for £2. Forgot to buy tile spacers but scrounged a few matches from someone this evening instead :rotfl:

Not bad! :money:

Several other things need doing to bathroom, hopefully equally cheaply...

(1) repaint flaking shower tiles - need small tin of metal paint
(2) redo sealant round bath - paid £2.24 for sealant, already had gun thing
(3) sort out wall that got damp - fiasco of a job :eek: Need to peel paper off (it's lots of separate pictures from old encyclopedias etc which Mr Cheery wants to keep :eek: ). Then scrap old broken plaster off, then learn how to plaster wall properly... then reattach paper stuff and varnish :eek: Will need to buy plastering paraphenalia and budget for a real plasterer to fix it when i do it wrong :rotfl:
(4) finish putting pics on rest of wall - already have pics and PVA, just need more varnish when done.

Trying to just think about one little bit at a time

Oh, and the loo seat's developing a crack so might need a new one of those at some point too!

rtandon27

Cheery_Daff wrote: »

... Oh, and the loo seat's developing a crack so might need a new one of those at some point too!

Ours too! I told OH it was his fault as he'd gained weight!


...and then he stood on the closed seat to reach the ceiling to clean off the mould that insists on coming back! The seat lid is now cracked too!


A plain white one at J0hn Lewi$ is 25pounds! Yikes that is a lot of money! Surely there is one cheaper that we can get delivered?