Confessions of a house hoarder

gallygirl

Great to hear it's all going so well. Look forward to hearing how Tor progresses with bookings, wow, that's some income from it

EssexHebridean

edinburgher said:

My parents have a home in the Western Isles, you're far removed from the crofter who also drives the school bus and works weekends in the village shop

There's plenty of ultra-modern style crofters out there as well - Barra in particular is an island utterly transformed by the internet! (I believe that Berneray is heading in the same sort of direction)

Caz you are doing SO well with all this stuff - and that's just superb about Tor - although having seen some of the progress pictures, I'm not surprised. 

edinburgher

They're on Barra 

cazmanian_minx

Invoicing day - I now have a few clients who I work for so regularly that they just have a spreadsheet each and I send them a bill once a month.  Total invoiced for February was £1,015 and I really wasn't expecting it to be that high, because I've been doing about 15-20 hours a week on our new village hall project for the past month.  Still mainly working for journalists, though NEL (Nice Elance Lady) and MRA (Market Research Agency) are also still clients.  Mr RPC and I parted company amicably a couple of years ago, he wanted me to be contactable and responsive to email/Whatsapp basically every second I was awake and I went freelance to get away from that!  Newer clients include two psychiatrists doing post-doctoral research, a ghost writer, a biographer and a few more journalists.  I currently have five clients writing books, so am getting a really good insight into all the interviewing that goes into writing biographies and non-fiction books on relationships!

cazmanian_minx

Mortgage paid and now below £108k.  My current transcription queue would choke a horse.  I have:

• 1 x 75-minute interview (full verbatim for one of the psychiatrists)
• 2 x 85-minute focus groups for the market research agency (nearly finished the first one and it's summarising rather than typing everything, thankfully)
• 3 x interviews totalling about 90 minutes for Journalist #1
• 8 x interviews for the next season of Riviera totalling 165 minutes (fortunately not needed until the end of the month)
• Incoming as a quick turnaround tomorrow night, interviews with cast and crew for the next season of Westworld. 
• Incoming but not urgent, interview with a couple who swing
• Incoming, one more interview full verbatim from the psychiatrist I have one for already
  
• Incoming, deadline unknown, 4 x interviews full verbatim for the other psychiatrist
  

Excluding the incoming stuff, that's about £350-worth, which is a nice chunk of my £1,000-a-month target, and if the five psychiatrist interviews all come in at around their usual 75-80 minutes, then that's another £300+.

Jessy103

Wow, those interviews sound amazing!

dawnybabes

Ooh, I’d be sooooo nosy ! I’d love it 

cazmanian_minx

I had to turn down transcribing Robbie Williams over the weekend, because I just didn't have time

I have a 15-page form to wade through now for remortgaging Tor.  They've seen the income projection and are happy that it supports the amount we want to borrow, so it's just us who need to meet with approval now.  As our mortgage on Ethel's is with them, they've got two years of knowing that we make our payments, but I'm concerned that our credit record is going to look a bit search-heavy, given we only remortgaged home in November.  Fingers crossed, anyway.

EssexHebridean

cazmanian_minx said:

I had to turn down Robbie Williams over the weekend...

I'd just use the above quote as I've edited it, if it were me...   😁

cazmanian_minx

EssexHebridean said:

cazmanian_minx said:

I had to turn down Robbie Williams over the weekend...

I'd just use the above quote as I've edited it, if it were me...   😁

Doesn't work quite so well today, when I had to turn down David Attenborough thanks to already being booked for something else!! 

I'm having a sulking moment today, there are two buildings in the nearest town that I've been keeping half an eye on since they first came up in auction listings last year.  Both have had their prices seriously slashed this week ahead of next week's auction and I don't have the cash for either.  One's a big 5-bed detached house, which was valued at £405k before its owner was made bankrupt and stripped all the period features out in a fit of pique when it was repossessed.  I went to view it in January last year when it first went to auction with a guide of £290k, it's now down to £138,750 guide price.  It has issues, lots of them, not least of which is PVC windows put into a listed building and a staircase to the second floor that you can feel the slant on as you climb it, but it was a very beautiful house and could be again.  The other is a former bank with two floors of offices above it, an absolutely huge old stone building (listed again), which would be a great retail space on the ground floor and then conversion to flats above.  Still has lots of period features in it and down from £150k to £82,500.  Lottery ticket this weekend!