Light the fire...

savingholmes

Hope you are ok

woodfired

Hello Diary!

Apologies for the hideously long absence.  Life just seems to get in the way sometimes.
Whilst away I have not neglected my MSE ways though, so I thought I'd pop in with some updates.

We have moved focus away from OPs the last 12 months as there have been so many jobs to do on the house.  However, we have still managed to get the balance down to £218k in 20 months (started at £241k) so not too shabby. 

We completed work on our drive in the summer.  There was much more prep work than first anticipated and we had over 300sq M tarmaced so the total cost of £15 000 didn't seem too bad, all things considered.

We also underwent some major landscaping work in the garden, removing a dead tree, lots of old fencing and trellis and a huge gazebo that faced away from the sun and was always damp.  We imported several tonnes of soil to level the site which had to be moved by hand (by us) and then turfed it and then re-fenced about 15m of boundary that was leylandii hedge previously.  We installed a little summer house (free - from in-laws) and a small gravelled seating area in the sunniest corner of the garden. It looks so much better and is a much more usable space now.

We have continued renovating inside too, redecorating (twice in fact - I went too bland first time around!) the living room.  Finally ending up with a deep greenish-blue room with thick fluffy grey carpet and our old leather sofas.  Its so cosy with the old snug woodburner fitted in there, a proper 'winter' room.

We ripped out lots of dated pine shelving (think CD shelves) from all over the office walls, installed some panelling painted in a sagey grey colour and a new carpet.  With a couple of occasional chairs and a huge old doctors desk (£50 FB marketplace) its now a lovely office/lounge.  It saves on the heating costs too as I now pop a small heater under the desk whilst working at home instead of heating the whole house with the CH when only I am in.

Finally, plans are underway to extend slightly at the back of the house and remove some walls in the kitchen.  Not a very MSE plan and we have done much deliberating over it.  However, the space doesn't quite work for us as it is, it is very bitty and segmented.  This should improve the flow and give us a lovely family room and entertaining space.  The deposit has been paid to the builder and the kitchen company, we are hoping to start work at the end of January so are now saving furiously to pay for it all!

There's probably much that I have forgotten but that will do for now.  Hope everyone is well. WF x

savingholmes

Glad you are doing well. Huge amount of progress. Future plans sound good too. Must be lovely getting the garden how you want it to. LOL at decorating twice but I get it...

woodfired

Thanks SH, it feels like we haven't done much sometimes but then when I think back to how things have altered since the beginning of the year I see we have done loads!  Hope you and yours are well, I must catch up on some diaries...

Fortune_Smiles

Nice to 'see' you Woodfired - great progress.  All sounds delightful.

Fortune x

woodfired

Fortune_Smiles said:

Nice to 'see' you Woodfired - great progress.  All sounds delightful.

Fortune x

Thanks Fortune, it is nice to be back and ready to re-focus. I hope you had a lovely Christmas, I had a quick catch up on your diary before I remembered my login details - it sounds like it was a busy but happy one with lots of guests.  Fab. xx

lucielle

Good to have you back. Your plans sound great
L

greent

Lovely to see you back - all sounds like it's going well  

savingholmes

I am ok. I have a new diary on the mfw board

woodfired

Afternoon.

Just a quick update on the month so far.  I returned two Christmas presents from DH.  Lovely gifts and very generous but both were expensive clothing which I didn't really need and I decided the cash would be better put towards the extension fund.  I've also returned some faulty Dun3lm bedding which I wasn't keen on.  I had used it for a couple of nights and not liked it (too slippery bamboo yarn) when I noticed that the stitching was faulty so was able to return it for a full refund thankfully. That has landed in the account today.  Finally DH wanted new golf shoes for Xmas which weren't a great fit when they arrived so I returned those for a refund.  He is going to make do with his old ones for a while longer so more cash into the extension fund. A bonus £300+ going into the savings. 

I logged into my T3sco account and found over £100 in vouchers which I used against an online delivery, a fab saving. 

I rounded down the mortgage by £76, we are cutting down on the OPs for the time being but I couldn't resist a small one.

I have paid both of our self assessment tax bills which are due at the end of the month, although it's not due yet I had the cash set aside so wanted to get it out of the way. I'm glad that's out of the way for another 6 months.

We have had a lovely but very cheap weekend, in fact, a no spend weekend.  We did some work in the garden on Friday then had DH parents round for a few drinks in the evening.  Saturday was Christmas day for my side of the family.  We had a jacob's join at my sisters.  I had made and frozen lots of goodies before Christmas for various parties that were then cancelled due to us all having COVID so these came in handy for my contribution to the food.  We also contributed a couple of bottles of wine from stores so nothing to buy.  Such a lovely evening was had and the children loved having new gifts weeks after the main event. 
Sunday was a quiet day, just DS' football match - which they won - so a happy weekend all round.