£207,470.42 to go...! (now £395,000 to go!)

TheOpportunist

Thank you for the well wished @Tartan_Mum & @twinklie
This has been such an awful year for us with so many pre-covid deaths in our family, some quite tragic too. Thankfully we have the birth of our son and (fingers crossed) the purchase of this new house to be happy bookends.
It is looking like we are just waiting on our buyer's buyer to get confirmation of their Military Help to Buy scheme in the next two weeks.
MrsOpportunist had a rough begining to maternity with not having the physical support of family around, and baby groups being cancelled, etc. DS doesnt seem to know any different now though, he is really enjoying his swim classes and gets to see a group of other babies of a similar age that are born to ex-colleauges of MrsO.

TheOpportunist

Good afternoon, Forum
It'll soon be 6 months since my last update and I thought I'd fill you all in.
We moved into our new home in December, a matter of weeks before Christmas. The little old lady that lived here before us basically used what is now my office as her sitting room, and her bedroom, and left the rest of the house unoccupied, which meant the radiators has to be opened up and rebalanced. We live up on a hill, so when the temperature reads minus 2, it was definately a few degrees colder, and the loft only had 50mm of insulation. 
I spend some money with the help of a relatives 10% discount to purchase loft insulation, some loft legs and boards to insulate the loft space. It was a bit of an ask, however I am happy to say that doing it myself has ensured that the job has been completed to my own standards. The middle channel of the loft (long narrow house) has yet to be further insulated as I would like to tackle some of the electrical junction boxes before they are hidden.

The old radiators here do not have TRV valves to turn themselves off when the air temp rises, so its an all or nothing at the moment. Today I have further restricted the flow up the upstairs radiators, which means they will take longer to heat up than the downstairs rads, however that should help keep the whole house warm, as downstairs feels much colder than upstairs right now.

The downstairs loo has been redone, at a cost of £2.5k. We reused the same guys that tiled and fitted our bathroom items in the last house. The job was near perfect last time, with the only detraction being that an inlet to the toilet could have been hidden had they known about the type of loo being installed. This time I asked them to supply and fit everything, and unfortunaley it has resulted in a poor outcome. You live and you learn, and we have resigned ourselves to 'it's only money'.

Rainwater toilet. So whilst 'it's only money' I have installed a whopping rainwater butt that gravity feeds our downstairs toilet, and has been signed off by our water board. This reduces our water consumption, saving us money and reduces the amount of water than needs treating. The payback time is about 5 years I believe. I have installed a water meter so that I can record usage against what we are billed per unit.

The new mortgage was a whopping £395,000. We have trimmed the fat from our budget, and Mrs Opportunity is back at work and doing her private work too so we are back to normal and have been for a while in that respect. I am working out of a dedicated office space rather than a spare bedroom, which is amazing. I have been interviewing for positions closer to home too, albeit most are remote anyway. It will reduce my new commute time of 1hr 45 minutes each way (not that I have had to do it) and will increase my compensation (I hope).