Cheery's country living adventure

Cheery_Daff

Evening chums 😊

Nice day of pottering around charity shops in a couple of different market towns. I spent about £37 in total on 3 dresses, a top, a jacket, and a scarf. One of the dresses will be going back, but everything else is acceptable so I'm sorted for outfits (although I will feel more comfortable when my stomach isn't quite so wobbly 🙄).

Heard back about granite prices. The original quote (for the cheapest one) was £2888, the cheapest ones we've chosen are £3260, so not too bad. We've got two at that price, six at £4030, and one outlandish outlier at £6180 😂😂 

The place isn't too far from work and I'll be there a few times this week, so we'll probably pop back now we know prices to choose between the cheapest ones 😁

Karmacat

Ignoring the outlier, the granite prices don't sound too bad.  And I'm hoping that because you went pottering in two market towns, you *didn't* spend your day plastering - enjoyment is the name of the game  

Cheery_Daff

Indeed I did NOT spend the day plastering! Decided to stick to the original plan and let them do it... Although if the plasterer is still ill on Monday I might suggest it! 

Had breakfast in the cafe, back home now and about to do some financial sorting out

- banks & YNAB
- order kitchen appliances (with cashback if I can get it)
- add to list of what we've spent on kitchen already (appliances, light fittings etc)
- update list of kitchen extras to get projected potential final cost
- sign Mr Cheery up for some Happy Wheel stuff
- do some of my own Happy Wheel things
- Mr Cheery needs to apply for the final SEISS grant but I don't need to be involved in that 

Quite a bit of rain here today so it feels like a good day to be cosy inside with a nice cup of tea looking at banks and spreadsheets. 

Oh, and I heard back from the bank - the reason I've not had my new card through yet is... because nobody sent it after my other one was blocked. They did apologise profusely, and it should be here by next Friday. I've realised (of course!) I can use the one I use for Happy Wheeling, so I'll dig out the pin for that (just need to remember to transfer to and from it) - I confess it is VERY annoying not having a debit card!

Will report back...

Cheery_Daff

Oh, also need to 

- ring granite place to see if we can go and see them on Tuesday to make a final decision
- book car in for MOT - the battery was being a bit sluggish today and I'd rather not have that hanging over us
- sort out Hello Fresh payment - I did update it last week when they tried to take it from blocked card but apparently it's not gone through again
- cancel audible - I meant to do that ages ago, but didn't, and now the payment (from the blocked card) has failed, this might be a good time 

I think that's it!

Cheery_Daff

Right, banks and YNAB done, but what a palaver! Got myself in a right mess trying to reconcile the credit card account. I THINK I understand it now, and everything seems to be showing the right balances... thank goodness. It did take a while though! 

Of the other things on the list. 

- garage not open til Monday
- granite not open til Monday
- Hello Fresh payment updated
- Audible payment updated for final payment (due yesterday) and cancelled

Phew! Might need a small lie down before doing the rest  

rtandon27

Cheery_Daff said:

...YNAB done...Got myself in a right mess trying to reconcile the credit card account.

Much as I love YNAB - the credit card accounts took some mind bending to get used to - once upon a time, you'd have to transfer funds to show the payments manually & then it changed to allocate the amount automatically as long as it was in the correct budget category.  All that to say - I feel for you!

Cheery_Daff

Glad it's not just me 😂 I love YNAB, it feels so intuitive - but not this 🙄 Didn't help that I hadn't reconciled the credit card account itself at all, so had to go through ALL the transactions since I got it in July, and I'd done something stupid (still no idea what) with the first payment I made to it, but I THINK it's right now.

Then I'd also not reconciled either the account that the kitchen  offset fund is in, or the premium bonds account, so they were both out too, but again, now all are reconciled and right, and the total 'net worth' figure is right.

I've also allocated the right amount to the kitchen savings pot (a virtual pot within YNAB, not the actual kitchen offset fund which is a separate bank account - do you wonder why I've confused myself??), which means I can see roughly how much we will have left in savings once everything is spend on the kitchen... 😮😮

I'll check exact figures when I head back downstairs... but adding in known extra costs (lighting, appliances, extra for granite) we're now up to about £26,375 in total.

On top of that, I'm estimating around £4000 for extra stuff the builder has said so far (laying extra pipes, fitting insulation they weren't expecting etc) so that'll take us over £30k 😱

Plus I imagine there will be extra for messing about stripping render off walls rather than building stud walls, little things they've had to redo etc. Not sure how much to allocate for that right now but maybe mentally adding another £4k is helpful?!

That'll take us to £34k, then we'll still need a bedroom carpet and some paint, and they've included £50 for door handles but there are bound to be extra, (oh and goodness me I've remembered light switches and skirting boards...).

OK. I think I need to mentally prepare for £35k 😱😱

We can do that from savings (well, Mr Cheery's pension lump sum, to be precise) if we need to, thank goodness, but I'd still like to aim for everything over the original £23k being found as extra money. We were aiming for £7k in the kitchen offset fund (taking to £30k total). I might just carry on aiming for that for now (we're at 60.5%!) rather than resetting my goal to £12k (and the percentage back to 30%ish) now.

Good grief this is all rather expensive isn't it?? Does rather remind me why we don't get people in very often! 😮😮

Mind you, in that total I've estimated an extra £8k just of builder costs, from his original estimate of £13k, so perhaps that's a little extreme... I'd rather over estimate at this point than have a nasty shock in a few weeks though.

Here's hoping Agent Million rings on Thursday 😂😂

Cheery_Daff

OK, some exact numbers for the curious, because I always like seeing exact numbers on other people's threads because I'm so nosey

ORIGINAL QUOTES
£13,715 original quote from builder
£5803 original quote from kitchen geezers
£900 magic corners for kitchen cupboards
£2884 granite
= £23,302 ORIGINAL QUOTE

KNOWN EXTRAS SO FAR
£600 radiators
£130 kitchen floor cleaning stuff and grout
£450 extra copper pipe
£200 extra insulation
£212 wall lights for upstairs and downstairs
£1107 appliances
£376 extra granite cos they quoted for cheapest and ours isn't
= £3075 known extras so far 

ESTIMATED EXTRAS - listed by builder as extras but without exact costs/hours)
I'm going on £55/hr each for the plumber and electrician, £75 for plasterer + apprentice and £75/hour for builder + apprentice which seems to be original figures on quote
£880 labour for fitting extra pipes (plumber x16 hours) 
£150 labour for fitting insulation (builders x 2 hours?)
£50 lintel (they bought a concrete one, but ended up using wood that we already had so might not charge for this)
£1200 labour for fitting lintel (builders x 16 hours?)
£150 rebuilding bedroom windowsill (builders x 2 hours?)
£300 stripping stud wall downstairs and insulating (builders x 4 hours)
£1320 extra for 1st fix electrics - quoted 4 lights, 6 sockets, but we've now got more than twice this - original quote was £660 so I've doubled this and added as extra)
= £4050 estimated extras from last builder email

OTHER POTENTIAL EXTRAS - really guessing now - not listed by builder yet 
£150 redoing cellar wall (builders x 2 hours?)
£150 redoing plasterboard holes for wires (plasterer x 2 hours?)
£2400 extra for stripping render rather than building stud walls (builders x 32 hours - they allocated 32 hours for building stud walls/plasterboarding so seems reasonable to assume it took twice as long)
= £2700 other potential extras for builder

OTHER EXTRAS
£650 bedroom carpet (roughly 25 square metres, and cheapest I've found locally including underlay and fitting is £26/sqm)
£96 paint (we've got white for the ceiling, guessing roughly 6 tins of wilkos colours at £16 each for the walls)
= £746 other extras

Ok, let's total that up.

= £23,302 ORIGINAL QUOTE
= £3075 known extras so far 
= £4050 estimated extras from last builder email
= £2700 other potential extras for builder
= £746 other extras
= £33,873 CURRENT POTENTIAL TOTAL

Seems wise to round it up to £35k I think...

Ok. Slightly frightening, but I'd rather know what I'm dealing with, and some of my builder time estimates are probably a bit out. I don't think there's anything massive I've missed. We're not painting skirting boards, they'll either be left wood, or stained with stuff we already have. Already got plasterboard etc to finish the kitchen ceiling. There's already £50 in the quote for door handles, and I've realised basic white plug sockets and light switches are included (we're not having anything fancy, but are having rounded corners so there might be a small bit of extra). 

Right, I should probably stop adding things up and go and figure out how to make a few more thousand on the Happy Wheel...  

greenbee

I know it's scary, but think how much easier life will be with it done! And before it gets really cold too.

Re. carpet - I'm not a fan, so upstairs I've mostly painted the floorboards (with diluted paint, so a kind of limewash effect, using the same colour as the walls in each room) and then sealed with floor varnish. You can still see the wood grain, and it reflects light back into the rooms. I then have rugs on parts of the floor - most of which are ancient and threadbare donations! My bedroom has recycled wool underlay, and then an enourmous and threadbare oriental carpet that's been cut down to fit. I do need to get it fixed properly at some point, but I like the fact that it's not 'carpet' IYSWIM... It was donated, probably hadn't been cleaned for at least 50 years and would have cost a fortune to get done properly - so I cleaned it myself in the garage in sections over a week when it was dry and warm and sunny. It was filthy, and probably still is. But it's also unique, free, and I don't worry about getting marks on it as it's already covered in about 75-years' worth! If you like that kind of thing, it might be worth putting a 'wanted' on freegle for old rugs and seeing what comes up. 

Cheery_Daff

Good suggestion - we've actually got a few old oriental rugs as it happens, and did something similar in our old attic and spare bedroom in the old house. The spare room looked nice, the attic was basically just used as a rug storage facility and looked quite ridiculous 😂😂

We'll discuss it - I think for this room we might just go with carpet though. But we'll definitely be doing a hotch potch in the kitchen. We've kept the terrazzo tiles in the kitchen half, and half of the dining area has similar tiles (different set of colours though) - but there's a big gap where the old chimney was that needs covering with something, as it's just badly poured concrete that releases clouds of dust however many times you hoover it 🙄 We're thinking some kind of  large rug over that - easy to sort later if we want to as there won't be much furniture.

Not sure about the bedroom though, will have a think. It's going to be directly above the kitchen so part of me does want proper underlay/carpet partly for a bit of soundproofing and separation.