Daydream fund challenge part 4

Fay

Daffy I love your posts!

As for housing, I'm in Warwick which is expensive. We have a lovely house and it's worth a fair bit because of its location and a large garden for Warwick. I would love one of the Georgian townhouses or original (very few left, maybe 5) houses. But doubt I will get get one as don't have 1 million plus. Ah well.

Toros is they are putting lots of new houses in but as choille says it's not affordable and they haven't thought about the impact on the town. Traffic is already bad, small medieval roads and lots of traffic, not good in places. But never mind the solution is clearly to throw up little houses made of ticky tack and cram more in! It will lose its charm and appeal if they're not careful.

Davesnave

choille wrote: »

Yes, the view is quite nice, but the trees look a bit ropey - all that ivy needs cutting off the trees.

To be fair to my friend, the trees pre-dated him and he lost quite a few to gales, disease etc, replanting with broadleaved, but there's 10 acres of them and that steep slope isn't easy.

Eventually, at around 75, he wisely downsized to about 0.5 acres.

My day wasn't great.:( It started with some tinkering on the roof when the temperature was still only 1c. :eek:

By lunchtime, I'd managed to slope-off to find a chimney cap, eventually finding what appeared to be one of only a handful in Mid Devon.....and then being charged £50 for it! With discount!

But the biggest disappointment is recounted here:

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/5565205

I'm just a bit cheesed-off. Lots of research went into that. Sometimes I wish we were more like a couple we know well, who just go to B&Q, choose something in half an hour, fit it and it looks passable.

choille

My trees are in a disgraceful state - I need to thin like blazes, but it's been so raw & there seems to be loads of other stuff needing done.

Had a nightmare fridge freezer scenario with Argos, supposed to get a replacement for the bashed one they delivered - eventually delivered, but no one came today when it was supposed to come. Phoned up and you get told lies. I am gobsmacked at how awful their customer service is - it's beyond belief - I really like the fridge freezer but I want one without a bash = they offered a 10% discount, but that's a joke. Rant over.

Davesnave

Argos just shift boxes, and like many box-shifting companies, they probably employ their fair share of [STRIKE]people[/STRIKE] neanderthals, oblivious to the idea that things inside the boxes might be damaged by rough handling.

Dire Straits recorded a song featuring the crass attitudes of people shifting white goods, so perhaps Mark Knopfler had similar problems.

I remember being a bit like that myself as a teenager, working in Tesco. It was amazing how many boxes of chocolate biscuits fell to pieces en-route from the warehouse!

But, even as a teenager, I was never hungry enough to eat a fridge freezer.... :A

Davesnave

We fitted the front part of the hearth yesterday, but because the back bit had been set too low, we couldn't really get the front edge to 'float' above the floor by around 1 cm as I'd intended.

I left it in-situ for half a day, and then, when our builder had gone, I ripped it all out. This is what it looked like:



I'm not a perfectionist, because I can't afford to be, but if something niggles too much, I won't stand for it. Part of the problem here has been the tight deadline we've been working to, but we haven't got that now, because I've cancelled the fire installation due today.

Project manager isn't happy, but agrees.

I've emailed the directors of the stone yard, but in the final analysis it's a bit of slate which I can replace with another for under £100.

I saved an incredible £84 by switching from our usual oil supplier yesterday and accepting a random time delivery!

In other news, the conservatory company turned up and started work because they'd hit a problem elsewhere.

Nice chaps, but they put a door frame in the wrong way round, haven't fitted the other properly and tried to fob me off with a modification to a sill that was manufactured wrongly, so that's another thing I'll be chasing-up.:mad:

Like the fireplace, it's a case of sort the error before things go too far and it becomes, "Sorry mate, there's now't we can do about that now!":wall:

Oh and the carpet fitters turned-up too, so we have a 3rd bedroom. They turned-out to be more farmers with many tales of woe about planning and enforcement in the lands just over the border from here. Not sure if we paid for the tales, which lasted over an hour, but they were reasonably cheap, anyway! :rotfl:

DaftyDuck

I've been demolishing an old garden wall, probably late Georgian, or early Victorian. A real shame, but it's onto the small lane which does get walkers with dogs and children, and it was completely unstable and overbalancing. But, that does mean I'm collecting hundreds of lovely, old soft red bricks, which I'll be able to build into a new wall at some point. It's all lime mortar, so the bricks are easily (ish...) cleaned, and a large quantity of rubble mortar and flint from the infill was left to fill one of my infamous holes. Learned a lesson: heavily laden, on icy soil and wet mud, my little tractor and its front loader are simply lethal. Start turning a corner, and the front bucket gets momentum; next thing you are heading for is where you came from. The steering takes a life of its own (mine too, if I'd kept going), and it all gets quite exciting!

So, I've stopped for now. Fields were getting rather churned up, and it started raining as well.

So, a picture quiz. Not sure what to ask, but... whazzit? Whazzup? Should enlarge with a click...




From a couple of days ago. Trees. Fence.Horse. Yep. But....

We thought it mighty impressive, but we had had the advantage of seeing the view half an hour earlier. I'm not sure how clear it is... but I'll put the "before" up if there's interest!

In other news... the local pheasants have worked out this is a safe haven, and an embarrassing number have now run from the big estate into my woods. One has even taken to sitting on the fence eyeing up my white doves. Well, their bird seed, more like.

Look, shooterists, I'm not stealing your pheasants. I'm really not. If they come here looking for refuge, what can I do? If I say "shoo" they look at me like I'm insane. All I can do is pretend I haven't noticed them, and carry on. I do hope the estate don't notice; I don't want to get in their bad books.

I need to get that long hedge in... I'm late with that, as with much else. I also need to find a belt, as my suit trousers now fall down, it's a year since I last needed them, I have lost weight from not sitting on my bum all day for a year, and I have to go to "posh work" next week.

I wonder what my serious colleagues would make of me if I turn up in a suit, with baler twine round my belly! :rotfl:

greenbee

Are they the ghosts of cows Dafty?

I've had an idea... not sure about it. But my dad died on Tuesday (not unexpected, very peaceful) and I'm sorting out the funeral arrangements. Among other things (including shooting those not-so-idiot pheasants that are hanging out at Dafty's) he loved wildlife and wild flowers. Do you think it would be appropriate to give everyone who comes to the service an envelope of wild flower seeds to sow? I know it's not usual, and that wildflower seeds are notoriously unreliable, but very few of them will know that side of him, and I want them to - and also to have a reminder of him if the dratted things actually grow!

if you don't think it's totally in appropriate, any suggestions as to what mixture to get/where to get it from?

DaftyDuck

It's a lovely idea. At a friend's funeral, we all had cuttings of willow to plant along the Cam river, as he was a keen watercolourist, and had painted several views of those trees.

Ghosts of cows..... We don't have cows..... But maybe close to ghosts, in a Shakesperian way...

Davesnave

I think the frost shadows are from an animal which stays still a lot, so my money is on the donkeys.

Is that a hide in the wooded background?

Sorry to hear about your Dad, greenbee, but if he was ready, like mine, you'll be celebrating his life rather than mourning his passing, so the seeds are a great idea. I'd sneak a few easy growers in, so even a children's mixture would work..... Or if he had a favourite colour.....We were instructed to wear red at a friend's funeral earlier this year....so that in that context it would be poppies, blue could be cornflowers etc.

The email to the directors of the stone co bounced :mad:, so I printed it and sent by snail. Grrr!

The stove co guys came and installed the flue anyway. They can return and do the fire + surround in around 10 days, without being inconvenienced, provided we get the hearth sorted. Quite funny: one of them said he had flu :rotfl:but claimed to be tough enough to cope.

We get the odd pheasant or two here, but then, most pheasants are odd. I don't get the attraction of shooting the things, but it's big business here, raising them.

Despite the recent frosts, my wasps in the bottom bank are still working away like it's August...:cool:

DaftyDuck

Dave, spot on....



The donkeys stood.. absolutely.. still.. for.. ages. The sun was out, but the air temp was -3°.

Horse wanders around grazing. Donkeys get bored (and hot), and wander off, leaving their shade behind... so Greenbee gets a close second...

Off to clean up the morning debris.

In the (misquoted) words of Adrian Monk: "I'll thank you later". This is my five-year-old tablet, and it knows nothing of current Java or Flash, so won't thank folk!