Cheery's country living adventure

Cheery_Daff

Right, time for some updating (well, a little bit :rotfl: )

Second builder quote is in:

Builder 1: £7800 (slightly dopey, but first to quote, said it would take 2 weeks and they could do it within the next 6 weeks)
Builder 2: £11,300 (quite corporate and professional, have an actual office and everything, said it would take 3-4 weeks and they can't do it til after Christmas)

Just waiting for Builder 3 now - he's my personal preference and also I suspect likely to be in the middle of those two quotes, but we'll see. He asked a question about joists and building regs, and it took me several days to get back to him, which I only did yesterday, so expecting a quote within the next week or so then we'll make the decision.

Had a letter today confirming the mortgage fix :money: 2.26% fixed til October 2024 which we're very happy with :money: Could probably have got cheaper elsewhere but given the trauma of last time we definitely did NOT want to do that just now :eek:

Plugged everything into the spreadsheet - original finish date was Feb 2043, new finish date is March 2043 :eek: :rotfl: But that's because I've plonked 2.26% right to the end of the mortgage, whereas they're assuming we'll go onto the standard variable rate after 5 years. There's only so much spreadsheet-messing I can do

Decided we're not making any more overpayments until the building work is done - it's going to wipe out most of our savings (after moving house wiped out the vast majority before ) so we'll need to spend several months rebuilding the emergency fund before we make any more overpayments :eek:

VERY glad at this point to have found matched betting! :eek: Up to over £3500 now :money: although obviously already paid about £1500 of that off the mortgage. April and May I was doing all the welcome offers so ended up with about £800 a month, whereas the last three months have settled down to between £500-600 a month - still a respectable amount to build the savings back up with though :j :j

Speaking of which, had a lazy few days on that front so going to get back on it now :j

Karmacat

Big difference on those two quotes - one thing that I've always found to be true is that the really good builders don't have a huge amount of time free, so appointments for new clients are a good distance away.

The other thing is a question: if there was a problem, who would be better to deal with? That's tricky, because dozy-seeming builder was first to quote, but second seems more professional.

Oh, of course, I *do* have another financial project, potentially - matched betting

Cheery_Daff

I'm really hoping Builder 3 comes in towards the lower end of the three quotes as he was definitely my preference to deal with. Would be very happy with Builder 2 as well, but expected they were going to be too expensive for us.

Not sure what we'll do if Builder 3 is more expensive than Builder 2 though :eek: Suspect he won't be though - 1&2 were smaller more local firms whereas 3 was more regional with lots of local authority/bigger contract work so our type of job probably isn't there preference.

Anyway, 3 got back to me tonight and said he'd provide a quote over the weekend so shouldn't be long to wait.

Not looking forward to massive depletion in savings :eek: but VERY much looking forward to having proper floors upstairs, losing the rubble floor in the kitchen, and not having a massive hole in the ceiling and the resulting heating bills :eek:

Cheery_Daff

Urgh, got my builders confused - 1&3 are more local, 2 is the more regional (and more expensive) one... :rotfl:

Karmacat

Cheery_Daff wrote: »

Not looking forward to massive depletion in savings :eek: but VERY much looking forward to having proper floors upstairs, losing the rubble floor in the kitchen, and not having a massive hole in the ceiling and the resulting heating bills :eek:

Floors are good. In general, I approve of floors :rotfl:

Cheery_Daff

:rotfl: :rotfl: so do I :rotfl: when we were doing up our old house there was a period of about six weeks where we had no floorboards on the landing show we moved various skirting boards etc. We were literally tip toeing across joists to get to the loo, right at the top of the stairs :eek:

It was a massive pain, and when we finally put the floorboards back after about six weeks I have NEVER been so appreciative of a solid floor and vowed never to take them for granted again :rotfl:

themadvix

:rotfl: love the story about the lack of floorboards. We had similar for a short time in our bathroom (although not across the whole room fortunately).

Hooray to actually managing to get three builders round!! :T And fingers crossed no. 3 is the winner. It sounds like he might be.

Cheery_Daff

Fingers crossed indeed. He did reply and say he'd do the quote over the weekend so we'll see.

Popped to Slimming World this morning - half a pound on in the last 3 weeks, yawn. Not too bad in itself, but I'd lost over a stone, and now I've put several pounds back on, so I've now only lost 5lbs in the last year :eek: Doesn't exactly feel like a good use of money right now Need to sit down and properly think - do I focus attention on it and lose the weight, or do I scrap the meetings and save the dosh (and accept my weight will likely creep up and up again, urgh).

Hmm.

Anyway, I've promised myself I'll get enough of a draft of this promotions form to send to my work mentor TODAY. That way I can have tomorrow completely off thinking about it :j and then can just tinker with it throughout the week, making my own edits, adding in specific bits of info that I need to look for etc. It's due in on Friday and I am VERY ready to stop thinking about it! :eek:

Next in line is my diploma - I'm having my portfolio assessed a week on Tuesday :eek: so it needs to be ready by then. Good gracious, I don't half like to stack up the deadlines :eek: :rotfl: But that's actually quite a nice thing to do, and I'm mostly now at the stage where everything's *written* it just needs to be put online, photos added etc. Few bits left to do, but they can be done an hour at a time in the evenings.

Will be very glad when that's out of the way too - going to feel like I've got so much time back! :j

Obviously tomorrow is September, and the start of the final third of the year :eek: So I need to have a think about what my focus is going to be (once those two things are out of the way).

I think DECORATING needs to be one focus - with any luck we'll have the building work done before Christmas (fingers crossed...), and the next things are to deal with the aftermath of that (which will involve plastering, rebuilding the kitchen etc - not exactly a small job :eek: ). We've also already started decorating the landing (which will take no more than a weekend once I'm in a position to throw some time at it), and would very much like to sort out the bathroom - I'd rather leave that one til the kitchen is done... :eek: :eek:

Another focus might be EXERCISE though, which will tie in nicely with the weight issue above... I'm entering a few months of work which will involve a lot of driving and a fair bit of sitting down, so making sure I get *some* exercise done, even if it's only an after dinner constitutional walk up the lane and an occasional bike ride or zumba class, will be great.

Obviously there will be the usual things - regular musical group meetings (and practice between) for a start, and something else that was just on the tip of my fingers but has now slipped away... Oh, matched betting! Of course! That savings fund is not going to rebuild itself! Aiming to make at least £600 a month so that will need a fair bit of effort.

Anyway, scaring myself now with my multiple projects :eek: :rotfl: Priorities this week are promotions, then diploma, and then we'll think about everything else after that.

And now it's time to go and shut the chickens in and think about tea :j

Moneyfordreams

:eek: Final 3rd of the year !! :eek:

Fortune_Smiles

Hi Cheery

weight loss goals here in the Shire too. I'm using Nutr@ch£ck which I've had success with before. You get a 7 day free trial at the moment.

Good luck with the decorating. That's something I'll have to look forward to next year

Fortune x