Mortgage free by 2021?!

shangaijimmy

Oooh, love ythe idea of different colours for different years. My house is very similar to yours, and i think i'll definitely pinch that idea for added 'nerdy' visual effect...

hiddenshadow

shangaijimmy wrote: »

Oooh, love ythe idea of different colours for different years. My house is very similar to yours, and i think i'll definitely pinch that idea for added 'nerdy' visual effect...

Yeah, me too! Thought it might look a bit wonky but I like the effect.

My only "complaint" is that I won't have nice even rows. Going to push to get below 164k in December but if we do it'll be by about £10 so definitely no chance of getting below £163k to finish off the row. Ah well, next year the big repayments start and then our nice rows will be gone to pot anyway (for a good reason, at least!). Must try and control the [STRIKE]OCD[/STRIKE] CDO tendencies though.

hiddenshadow

Pretty good (though unexpected) MSE day today. Phoned up our plasterer today to arrange doing our downstairs toilet (spent a weekend a few weeks ago laboriously de-tiling it). That prompted me to look up bathroom units to go back in once it's all done, and Homeb@se has a massive sale on now so we got a vanity/toilet worth over £800 for just over £250 including delivery. Also bought it with TCB so we should get ~£5 cashback.

Also bought the last door we need to replace all the doors in our house (had purchased the other 8 on offer months ago and they've been sitting in the garage since!). Carpenter's coming next week to quote, so at least if the price is right we can proceed with that whenever we like - our door handles are really mean, we keep getting caught/bruised on them, so it will be nice having fresh new doors and hardware (also on hand). Should get ~£5 cashback on the door as well (and free delivery, woo!).

Think that's almost the end of our house DIY spend - need to see if we can get a gate in the garden fence (if so, need to buy the gate itself), and get the carpenter to quote on installing the fence. (We were meant to install it ourselves with family help this spring, but that was a whole drama in itself.)

We went great guns on redecorating the house last year (also replaced the kitchen and bathroom) and then lost almost all our momentum this year, so it would be nice to get the house done (and decorated - haven't put up any artwork in almost 2 years!) this winter.

hiddenshadow

Weekly shop done today. Have been trying out Shopitize the last few weeks and we got enough for a payout today, so that's £5.65 to the mortgage.

MFWKid

Hey hiddenshadow - looks like its going well. Will be following with interest - best of luck!

I know what you mean with redecorating - it seems to come in waves, but we've just started to get back into it again. My logic is, at them moment, keeping the house in good condition is closer to investment as we are pouring money into the mortgage

hiddenshadow

MFWKid wrote: »

Hey hiddenshadow - looks like its going well. Will be following with interest - best of luck!

I know what you mean with redecorating - it seems to come in waves, but we've just started to get back into it again. My logic is, at them moment, keeping the house in good condition is closer to investment as we are pouring money into the mortgage

Thanks!

We were pretty relieved that our lender did an internal appraisal (via whatever house value data they have on hand) over the phone, so no need to have an estate agent round to look at the place - there's DIY material (not to mention clutter) pretty much everywhere.

Hoping to get an EA round next spring if we can finish off the DIY stuff by then, if only to confirm the bank's valuation. In theory we're at 60% LTV (based on the interest rate we got) so the house should have gone up ~£50k since we bought it, but that seems too good to be true! We only put 10% down (paid off another 15% since then) so if we did get 15% for "free" thanks to the market, that would be great.

ourcornercottage

We have solar panels, installed earlier this year. Cost £4800 for a 3.75kw system including iboost. Have recieved £425 in fit payments for last 6 months and electricity usage has gone down from 15 to 5 units per day and oil usage is virtually nil due to iboost. Baring disaster, Pay back will be 7 years on a very conservative estimate.

I personally would LOVE to buy a house with solar panels due to fit payments (which transfer to new owner) and free electricity and I love seeing them on a roof. Not everyone thinks they are ugly, a lot of people think they are very responsible. The other factor is they aren't difficult to remove it required.

I don't regret having them for one minute. If you can't face them think about geo thermal (my next plan) if your garden is a reasonable size.

hiddenshadow

hiddenshadow wrote: »

Pretty good (though unexpected) MSE day today. Phoned up our plasterer today to arrange doing our downstairs toilet (spent a weekend a few weeks ago laboriously de-tiling it). That prompted me to look up bathroom units to go back in once it's all done, and Homeb@se has a massive sale on now so we got a vanity/toilet worth over £800 for just over £250 including delivery. Also bought it with TCB so we should get ~£5 cashback.

Update on this - it tracked at the full £800+ so the cashback is actually £17.38! :j Won't pay out for 8 weeks, but hey, £12+ more than I was expecting.

hiddenshadow

Thanks for weighing in OCC. We've got two quotes from different companies (in person) this week, so will see if the numbers work out any better. Also hoping to hear back from the heating company regarding replacing our forced air heater, so that we can compare the costs for both (will definitely want to replace the heater in the next couple of years).

Have been dreaming up/researching eco-friendly house build plans and dreaming of having solar panels and wind farms and things once we're MF.

atypicalblonde

Hello hiddenshadow

You are incredibly focussed it's so lovely to read. And very very close to your 2015 target too, well done!! I would love to have solar panels, maybe in the next house...

Best wishes, ATB xx