Cheery's country living adventure

Cheery_Daff

It wasn't too bad considering! And the builders look like they're well on the way to finishing today :j One lintel is replaced, they're doing the other one today. They've mortared in the windows, and put the bits of packing behind most of the wall plates like the building regs geezer wanted so all good :j

We've both come into town again today, but Mr Cheery didn't stop for breakfast - I had tea from the tea kitty, and porridge from my desk drawer :money: I've not brought lunch, but having just checked said drawer and I've got a packet of flavoured microwave rice and a tin of chick peas - not exactly inspiring but will save me a trip to the cafe. Have also got a mini tin of peaches in there, and I did bring a couple of satsumas, so maybe that'll keep me going without spending anything...

Totted up MB money last night - ended up October £300 up :money: Not brilliant and I'm a bit disappointed if I'm honest - I was up to £333 on the 15th (!) but because I've pretty much done all casino rather than football, it can go down a bit as well as up, and since the middle of the month it's been all gain a bit, lose a bit.

Just the way it is, but frustrating.

Still, I've got £20 worth of refunds for various things and £15 of free bets to arrive today so that should get November off to a nice start at least, and I am not forgetting that overall I am over £4200 up in total which is brilliant! :money: :money:

Would LOVE to get to the point where I've made enough to cover the building work by the end of the year, so

£5100 - original work
£500 - lintels
£800 extra windows
= £6400

So another £2200 to go in two months :eek: perhaps not :rotfl: :rotfl: But covering the original building work of £5100 means I only need another £900 by the end of the year which seems manageable! :j And Mr Cheery is on the case with selling musical equipment which will hopefully cover the cost of the new car :money:

Anyway, onwards with work...

Cheery_Daff

Afternoon chums :hello:

Rather soggy (again) out here in the wilds today. Will it ever stop raining I wonder??

I did buy some Sugru to experiment with fixing my wellies so we'll see how that goes :rotfl: :rotfl: I've tried before with a tube of stuff from Wilkos which didn't last five minutes, but I've heard good things about this stuff...

Today is NOT progressing as planned, although some things are getting done. Buildings packed up and left yesterday :j :j Which was great, and I was about to pay the rest of their invoice, when Mr Cheery noticed that two of the giant bolts that hold the new upstairs floor onto the wall aren't actually anchored into the wall properly - one wobbles, and the other one I can just pull straight out with one hand :eek: :eek:

Sigh. Does anyone ever do anything properly these days?! I don't know whether it was crap to start with, or whether it got dislodged when they did the lintel, but it means that side of the wall is just held up by 2 bolts now, not 4, so it does rather need sorting out..

Anyway, email sent, and I'm trying to forget about it and get on with the rest of my day (Mr Cheery is not so sanguine... but as far as I'm concerned we've done what we can actually do by telling them it needs fixing - no point fretting about it now!)

Anyway, other things I wanted to get done today...

* tidy living room
* tidy temporary kitchen
* wash up
* giant pile of my clothes out of the bathroom
* hoover downstairs
* change sheet and pillowcases (I did actually manage the duvet last night but it was at bedtime and I just couldn't be bothered doing the rest :rotfl: )
* stick new oil and hole-fixer stuff in the old car to see if it leaks back out again
* clean out chicken house
* go for a run
* order Mr Cheery a new bank card
* have a nice bath

Darn it, I meant to put something in the slow cooker, is it too late?? If it's just veg and lentils, perhaps I'll get away with it... In fact maybe if I just call it lentil soup and don't add any potatoes... Might give it a try anyway...can always eat it tomorrow and just have cereal for tea (again) if it doesn't work :rotfl:

We did nip to the cafe this morning (£7.20, and I see it really as buying our sanity at the minute ), then popped into town and quickly round the charity shops (only bought milk though - not in a charity shop!), then to the DIY shop for plaster, cement, sugru to fix my wellies, and a new plastering trowel as mine has vanished off the face of the earth (in reality it's probably in the garage...)

Of course I can't actually do any plastering as Mr Cheery now thinks we shouldn't go into the new upstairs rooms until the bolt is fixed... Sigh. He's probably right, but I did so want to start DOING things.

Hey ho, got enough on my blithering list for the rest of the day without worrying about plastering as well! :eek:

Best get on...

Cheery_Daff

Ok, some stuff done, some stuff ongoing...

*[STRIKE] tidy living room[/STRIKE]
* tidy temporary kitchen Done a bit, will do more in a minute
*[STRIKE] wash up[/STRIKE]
* giant pile of my clothes out of the bathroom - Just going to run a bath and will do this while it runs!
* hoover downstairs - done living room, landing, kitchen, will do bathroom in a minute
* change sheet and pillowcases (I did actually manage the duvet last night but it was at bedtime and I just couldn't be bothered doing the rest ) - Mr Cheery currently in bed not feeling well so this will have to wait
* stick new oil and hole-fixer stuff in the old car to see if it leaks back out again - No, and dark now so this will have to wait
* [STRIKE]clean out chicken house[/STRIKE]
* [STRIKE]go for a run[/STRIKE]
* order Mr Cheery a new bank card
* have a nice bath Just about to run this now as a reward for all the cleaning and going for a run!

So not too bad! :j Also did an hour of MB (didn't do me much good today but £46 up for November) and a blog post.

For the rest of the evening, a bit more tidying and hoovering, a nice soak in the bath, some flute practice I think before rehearsal tomorrow, and maybe finishing off the last little bits of my diploma :j :j

Karmacat

Sounds good to me, Cheery - and I totally agree that visiting cafes while the builders are in is a *really* good idea. Horrible about the bolts, though - thats not a good feeling. I've been waiting for a few months before I post on checkatrade about the builders who did my kitchen, because every time I post straight away, something awful comes up - but this time, there's nothing. I hope fixing teh bolts will be the end of it for you, and you can get on with the DIY then.

pinkypig

Great progress Cheery - an actual floor :rotfl: Hope all goes well with the ‘snagging’. It’ll be worth it in the end - your place sounds dreamy :):)

Cheery_Daff

More 'being menaced by an unknown shape lurking in the shadows nightmarey' rather than dreamy at the minute PP :rotfl: :rotfl: Or perhaps more like one of those dreams where you're trying to do something but your feet are stuck in a bucket of treacle, or you're tied to something and can't move :eek: :rotfl: :rotfl:

You're right of course, and it WILL be worth it in the end :j But I am VERY ready for builders to finish the damn job properly and get out and leave us to it :mad:

Interesting about reviews KC, I've been wondering about that. Do you ever leave a bad one? I'd like to be honest for the next people, but I feel a ludicrous sense of loyalty to the builders who are, after all, nice blokes. At this point I'm not sure what I'd say They're cheerful, friendly, left the place pretty tidy, turned up when they said they would, charged as quoted, agreed to do extra work when it came up and did it promptly, and did the stuff required by building regs quickly too.

On the other hand, it would have been nice if they'd done it properly in the first place :rotfl: and clearly it's not good that these bolts aren't fixed to the wall! :eek: There are various things that they've not done as well as we would have done ourselves... but then we didn't do them :rotfl: and they know we're doing all the plastering, skirting boards etc so a lot of that will get covered up anyway.

Guess it depends which one of us leaves the review... :rotfl: :rotfl: For the sake of marital harmony it might be easier not to leave one at all!

Anyway, house is tidy (well, the main rooms we're living in), bath is run :j Slow cooker food was surprisingly nice - I literally just threw in lentils, yesterday's leftover microwavable rice and chick peas, some brocolli and a stock cube, and put it on high for a couple of hours :j Nice to know something cheap and cheerful can appear so quickly, especially as we're currently without a hob and the microwave is so ancient and rubbish it won't go for longer than 5 mins without conking out :eek:

Oh, and a confession I found half a loaf of sliced bread in the cupboard it was green

And on that sorry note, I'm going to take one of my final issues of Country Living into the bath and think festive thoughts :rotfl: :rotfl:

Karmacat

Festive thoughts ahoy :j:j:j
Nope, I've never left a bad review either, Cheery - all was well when I posted them, in any case. I mentioned the delay to the kitchen man, and he said, well, you can always change a review - I didn't know that.

Twice I've given excellent feedback about staff to the companies concerned - I never made public reviews because there were other negatives (a hotel room with a window that wouldn't close and a hole in the ceiling isn't a good thing).

The thing about the bolts is especially important though, that sounds like its actually about safety.

I think you've found the real solution - not to leave a review at all!

Cheery_Daff

Certainly seems the easiest way KC!

Anyway, morning :hello:

Slightly misty here this morning, although it's receding a bit now. Often is like this, especially at this time of year, with mist over the hills and fields that quickly goes again. I quite like it.

I've got a quiet half hour so just looking back at yesterday's list...

*[STRIKE] tidy living room[/STRIKE]
*[STRIKE] tidy temporary kitchen[/STRIKE]
* [STRIKE]wash up[/STRIKE]
*[STRIKE] giant pile of my clothes out of the bathroom[/STRIKE]
[STRIKE]* hoover downstairs[/STRIKE]
* change sheet and pillowcases (I did actually manage the duvet last night but it was at bedtime and I just couldn't be bothered doing the rest )
* stick new oil and hole-fixer stuff in the old car to see if it leaks back out again
[STRIKE]* clean out chicken house[/STRIKE]
*[STRIKE] go for a run[/STRIKE]
* order Mr Cheery a new bank card
* [STRIKE]have a nice bath[/STRIKE]

Not bad at all! :j

The builder has sent his invoice for the lintels (I did ask him to - but I note he hasn't replied to what I said in the email about him needing to come back to fix the screws...), and there are a few other things to get done today. All feels rather more manageable in a tidy few rooms though!

* Washing on
* Washing hung up
* Order Mr Cheery's new bank card
* YNAB and banks
* Pay builder's invoice
* Stick new oil stuff in the car
* Change sheets
* MB
* Bit of flute practice
* Poo pick chicken run
* Dismantle at least some of the temporary chicken fence and staple the plastic roof on
* Make something in slow cooker

We'll likely also go to a cafe for a bit once Mr Cheery's up, and I need to go to band practice late afternoon for a few hours, so the day will no doubt run away with me! Best get started (with the jobs I can do sitting down first, I think... )

Cheery_Daff

OK, so I've just done banks and YNAB :eek:

We REALLY do need to tighten our belts for a bit :eek: Once all the building work is paid for (total of £6400) this is what we'll have allocated in various pots:

£1000 - Car replacement (probably this month)
£1000 - Household emergency (boiler, septic tank etc, although this is nowhere near enough if either of these goes wrong!)
£320 - Income replacement :rotfl: Not going to last long! But this is where we put everything not allocated to anything else

Quite worrying, particularly as we WILL be replacing the car probably this month - I'm about to go and see if I can fix the oil leak, but given that the steering column is also on the way out, there's no way it'll pass an MOT in early January anyway.

In smaller savings pots, we have...

£32 Home maintenance
£50 Car maintenance
£160 Christmas
£85 Dentist (Mr Cheery will likely need a crown soon so this isn't enough)

Plus we also save monthly for annual bills, so we have enough put aside for car insurance, breakdown, house insurance etc whenever that's all due, so no problems there, and all normal bills are allocated for the rest of this month, and we have enough for food, diesel etc for this month, plus I'm paid in a fortnight so that will top things up a bit.

So it's not that bad. I suppose over the last few years I've got used to having *savings* and not having to worry if things go wrong. Maybe we should have waited a bit to do the building work

BUT, come on Cheery, drag yourself out of this minor panic lass Let's focus on the good things.

You DO have enough to finish paying the builder
You DO have enough to buy a new car
You DO have enough being saved each month to pay annual bills
Your wages cover all your monthly outgoings and savings for annual bills
MB income has been at least £300 a month since you started in March, so that will get you another £600 by Christmas at least
Mr Cheery is in the process of selling stuff which will raise another £1000

So, deep breaths. We are NOT on the edge of starvation, and after all could EASILY cut our cafe budget (although at the minute we're choosing not to as the building work has been rather trying and getting out of the house to a cafe is the one thing keeping us relatively sane)

So really, I have nothing to moan about Onwards!

Karmacat

And thats why diaries are so important! Knowledge is power good for you.