Put away your purse & become debt-averse

PurpleFairy26

I’m so glad it’s come in at a reasonable amount for you and you are able to schedule getting it done too. It must be a weight of your mind. 

Hope the weather is not too bad over your way, positively bleak here. Enjoy your weekend. 

1LuckyLady

Great news on the building work Foxgloves.  

Kantankrus_Mare

Thats fantastic news Foxgloves.......very rare building work comes in at less than expected and knowing you.....you will be getting your teeth into planning. The warmer weather will soon be here. Cant believe the wind and rain we have had for the last few weeks but like everything else in life.....it will pass. Sun is shining here this morning so I should get motivated and do something. Last visit to the allotment there were daffs sprouting so maybe there will be something else coming up today to put a smile on my face.

maryb

Good news on the costs.  Looks like ignorance (about likely costs) wasn't bliss but the relief must be enormous

foxgloves

Thanks all of you. Yes, it is a big relief. Quotes hardly ever come in at less than I think, whether it's the house, car jobs or even the dentist! We do have other work which needs doing, but this builder bit was always going to be the biggest because aside from the buildy bits they're doing & the damp wall, they are also going to install an entire new heating system from scratch.
Tescodealqueen-Well done for resisting that takeaway. Cost-wise they really do add up. We still have them, but they are a rare event now.... maybe 4 times a year, 5 at most & we enjoy them much more for their rarity.
Kantankrus - Hope you found something lovely at the allotment. Spring bulbs just feel so welcome, don't they? Mum's big winter iris is flowering at the moment, also one of the divisions I took from it last year. Just nice to see some colour in the garden.
F x

foxgloves

Evening m'dears,
Well, we had a back-up plan for today:
Plan A was to go to the week-long event which was flooded last weekend. We decided to make a Plan B if the end of the week was still very wet, as parking is on grass & we felt it would be a quagmire by today. OK, so it has wazzed it down all week so we decided late last night to implement Plan B. This was to visit a place just over the borders into the next county. Car park is hardstanding & most walks are path based. Weather forecast had implied that this morning wouldn't be too bad, blowy but drier was distinctly the impression I got. So I was none too pleased to be woken this morning by sheets of 'blowy but drier' horizontally lashing our bedroom window. It seems that what 'blowy but drier' actually meant was, joy of joys, A LOAD MORE RAIN!! So we abandoned Plan B & just went to Sainsbury's. Due to my archaeological excavations of the back of the freezer this week & only needing to put one 'new' meal on the meal plan (& that's something which will feed us for two days), we came in nicely under budget. This was the last grocery shopping of my February budget so unless we go out on some frenzied weather-induced spree tomorrow, we will end the month with the grocery budget in credit.
Sky as black as a bag of prunes but fairy lights, fire & candles already lit. I'm hoping to finish reading my book so I can begin next week with a new one.
Be cosy, Comrades, 
F x

Onebrokelady

Boo to your horrible weather Foxgloves, we had a sunny but windy day up until about 4pm then the rain came back,it sounds quiet out there at the moment so I'm hoping it's not the calm in the never ending storms 

I'm glad you got your quote back and that it was lower than you expected 🎉🎉

When I left my house this afternoon I noticed a clump of really pretty crocuses had come up in my front garden, they must be the only ones to survive the great squirrel attack of 2018, are crocuses meant to come back again and again,I never replanted any because the squirrels kept digging them up, my Hellebores are also now all flowering and looking lovely too

foxgloves

I like hellebores, OBL. I've got a couple flowering atm. The ones I dug up & brought from Mum's house before we sold it are alive, but not sufficiently established here yet to flower, so maybe next year for those.
I don't have much luck with crocuses - not from naughty squirrel issues - it's birds which are the problem here. The crocuses barely used to get beyond buds before all the petals were pecked off, chewed & spat out by our rebel sparrow army. Last year I successfully grew some purple & white striped ones in a bowl on the courtyard. I left them in there & they are now flowering again for a 2nd year. They look surprisingly stylish because they are an unusual shade of purple. I'll replant them in my winter bed when they've finished flowering & see if they survive in there without being shredded to pieces by bad beaks. 
F x

foxgloves

Hello Still-just-about-weekend-people,
We awoke this morning & Mr F said "Listen"......
I said, "Listen to what? I can't hear anything" & I couldn't.......not even Cat trying to scrape off a door panel in the daily quest for his breakfast........
"Exactly", he said, "it's NOT RAINING!!!"
I jumped out of bed & twitched the curtains to have a look at this phenomenon of a Dry Day,
Ah no, back as we were.......it was absolutely chucking it down & had been most of the night judging by the amount of puddles. It just happened to be vertical instead of horizontal rain for a change, so hadn't been lashing the windows.
So that put paid to our hopes we might get out & do at least one of the things that have been rained off over the last couple of weeks. We decided to have a lazy breakfast, make an extra jug of coffee, turn the little stove on in the conservatory & have a business meeting at our dining room table. Well, a Financial Summit might be a more accurate description, I suppose.  We went through the builder's quote again, including the amendment & added on VAT, then we made a list of all the other things we need to do from the sum of money I've ring-fenced for home improvements - it was kind of a shout-it-out brain dump kind of thing, but it was useful as we then prioritised the jobs/purchases & also put a 'best estimate' of cost at the side of each one. We've tried to over rather than under-estimate, as we'd rather have some money left over than commit ourselves to so much that we end up having to raid our savings. The upshot of all that was that we think we probably have sufficient money & a window of time pre-builders arriving to look into getting out awful front courtyard (laid by Mr DIY Numpty) & our truly awful back courtyard (also laid by Mr DIY Numpty but can only assume he decided to wear a blindfold while he did it for an additional challenge) properly re-laid. They do both need doing & would definitely add to kerb appeal/look of the place when we eventually come to sell in future years. There would also be the additional advantage for me of not having to hear Mr F effing & blinding about the cr*pness of the back courtyard for the 8 million & forty-ninth time. I am going to think about it a bit more about it & may very well phone the local firm who did our recent outside work to get a quote for two new courtyards. Anyway, I do go on, don't I? We had all the conflab about that, then we decided to make a list of all the jobs on the house that need doing which we can do ourselves. Some of these are very small......i.e new sealant around 2 or 3 internal window frames......others will involve a bit more sorting & tip trips i.e emptying out the loft. So it was a really useful morning, making sure we are on the 'same page' where all the work is concerned. I'm hoping for a really productive week ahead. Expecting workmen for our annual huge hedge cutting & some tree work this week too, so that will be another bill, but also an important job crossed off the list as all the rain & lack of a proper winter has meant that everything we DON'T want to get any bigger, like massive hedges, has continued to grow.
Well m'dears, it's Mr F's cooking night.....he's trying something new from the latest 'Pinch of Nom' book & I'm just about to light some candles, draw the curtains & close my little heated propagator up for the night.
Bye for now,
F x

Onebrokelady

I understand about the courtyards Foxglove, I have a large patio outside my back door that is like a court yard because the garden is steeply terraced, whoever laid this patio was really into crazy paving and it awful, there's gaps everywhere and it's a full time job keeping it weed free, I was going to have decking laid over it at some point but there is also a manhole cover in the middle so I would need some sort of access to that, i still haven't had it done because despite the fact that my son in law could do it for me it would still cost quite a bit,I'm thinking I might just have a go at mending the mortar myself in the summer so at least the gaps would be filled in,it's yet another job that needs doing to my money pit of a house 😳