Only freedom will do

edinburgher

Contractorgate continues: plumber is now written out of the annals of men, he can booger off, carpet fitter was also a no show and plasterer asked a) to start a day later and b) pointed out that the work would take him 4 days, not the 3 he quoted for.

Also loaded with the cold and did not sleep last night

Have booked next week off to (hopefully) decorate... £291.44 paid off 0% credit card, card closed and chopped up, savagely, with scissors :j

Now all I need to figure out is where we're getting £1200 for the plasterer and another £150 or so for paint :think:

Edit: and another £53.65 paid off of 0% CC 3/4.

LadyGnome

The joys of renovation. I hope you have a bit more luck with tradesmen soon. Well done on the CC.

Goldiegirl

Once you find someone reliable, a tradesman is worth his weight in gold - but it's such a palaver finding one.

We have a guy who does a few things for us, like cutting back shrubs and clearing gutters. He's great, but even with him we've had a few dramas about rearranging dates etc.

earthgirl

Hope you get the tradesmen sorted - that sounds crazy! Good luck, and don't work too hard on your week 'off'.

edinburgher

earthgirl wrote: »

Good luck, and don't work too hard on your week 'off'.

Chance would be a fine thing... :eek:

My attempts to shrink our budget quickly have met with mixed success, largely because of how efficient banks are at processing changes. We had no sacred cows when looking at areas to slim down so that we can get our 0% debts paid down and finish the house, so SIPP payments and OPs were meant to be paused for the next year or so.

This worked fine with the SIPPs (where it was a case of cancelling a DD), but not so well with the OPs, where N@twest continue to take our £50/m despite requests to stop. Part of me is inclined to just go with the flow - we cut £300/m+ from other parts of the budget, so very much headed in the right direction regardless?

Staying with inlaws goes pretty well - lift from the station yesterday, MIL cooked dinner and FIL made us a cocktail after dinner as we sat watching the garden A welcome break from the chaos of our own half finished home. Plasterers are on day 2 of 4 days today.

£53.12 paid off 0% CC 3/4, managing a few low spend days through the power of overstaying our welcome at inlaws

Karmacat

Hello Ed! Cocktails with the inlaws? I like the sound of that It's definitely a good idea to get out of your own house when there's plastering going on. Hope you can fully recover from that lurgy too.

edinburgher

Ah, the lurgy, I am more bogey than man :eek:

Karmacat

Oh my god, what an image :rotfl::eek::rotfl::eek::rotfl::eek:

pavlovs_dog

s'not very nice

edinburgher

Blimmin' Bruce Springsteen - it took me 2 1/4 hours to make the 4 mile trip home last night! :eek:

£52.59 paid off of 0% CC 3/4, with £34 or so of P2P interest received.

I have a decision to make at work and I'm not sure if I'm being selfish or not. I'm not a big fan of my current job and have made a conscious decision to avoid being there whenever possible so as to preserve my sanity until something more interesting comes up. To that end, my employer is obviously trying to find ways to slash their wage bill and one of these is the ability to purchase additional leave (basically a pay cut, you retain full-time T&Cs).

Long story short, I can take an extra fortnight a year, but it will cost me £90/m. What price a little extra piece of mind? Has anyone else done similar?