SLLM (Single Lady Large Mortgage)

Sistergold

Oh thank you @slm6002 🌺

Sistergold

 Good evening ladies. The year is surely progressing fast and I need to be thinking ahead so as to be able to move the house forward. As I am only left with 2 kitchen units to make the next important job to do is the walls as you have seen in my above posts. I am not sure if I will tile but I think tiling is a good skill to have so I have gone ahead and registered for foundation in tiling. I have also registered for a plastering course as I think plastering is also quite important. 

The kitchen walls were damaged when I removed old tiles so they will need sorting out before any other finishing can be done. I am hoping to do four courses this year but if I don’t manage that many then the two I have already made an enquiry about will do. This was quite short “notice” as when I looked up the course there was one for weekend of the 11th of February and it will be for 4 days. The other course will be 4 days in March. The plan is to do plastering and tiling in February and March. I then plan to do electrical and bricklaying in April and May. I am hoping that with the above I can move my skills forward to be able to do more around the house. I especially want to use the new skills to complete my kitchen during summer by which time I would have completed the training. 

The tiling course I will do is the foundation I will then see if I need to do the advanced. For the kitchen I think the foundation will do as I don’t even know if I will decide to tile but guess learning will do no harm except that the courses are never cheap. 

The cost

Four day plastering is £445
Four day tiling foundation is £445

I have personally not been able to find any free courses whenever I have searched! All the other courses I said I have done I had to pay similar amounts(+/-).  If anyone knows where in London I can find free course please tell me even if it is by inboxing me. 

lantanna

Still here, still making small repayments on the mortgage.  The cost of living is crazy right now.  Not too much will happen for me in the house this year, im getting quotes to get the patio extended and that will probably be about it!  Still sitting on my bean bag in the living room.  Im def getting my moneysworth out of it 

fantasyvsreality

You are an inspiration @Sistergold It's awful that I think of myself incapable of so many tasks a man can do and yet it is simply that we haven't been shown, taught or encouraged. I dropped by a community hub near to my home today, it runs a beginners carpentry course so I have signed up. I want to be able to make the odd thing, like bench to put my pot plants on. Seeing what you have achieved with your kitchen is incredible so it spurred me on. I like that the key thing is how good it makes you feel to see what you have made! 

Sistergold

@lantanna, yes cost of living is going crazier by the day! Well done for making any kind of repayment, nothing is ever too little. Just chip away and it will add up. If you can get the patio done that will be progress for sure. It’s nice to have a nice entrance. X

Sistergold

Hello @fantasyvsreality, well done for summoning the courage to sign up for a carpentry course. It’s the first step and making something that is important and who knows how far you will go? The only limit is our minds. We can do much more things than we think we can. X

lantanna

Patio is booked in for the 1st week of April, really looking forward to having it done.  I make overpayments of £5 every time I've built it up in my save the change.  I'm happy with this for the first year.  Yes every little helps and it will mount up over time.  I expect next year to be much better for overpayments  - well if the cost of living crisis hasn't crippled us before then! 

Sistergold

@lantana, yes cost of crisis, never thought it will get this bad when it was all starting but looks like it will get worse before it gets better. Praying and hoping we all manage to stay afloat for sure! X

Sistergold

Little gains
The year is progressing nicely I think as this year I just want to be more intentional in my living. I also plan to close any little financial leeks. In the spirit of not being wasteful I gathered all unused boxes of flooring as I did not want to go over the 90 day B&Q returns window. Happens I bought the vinyl flooring in November and time was truly running out. Managed to take the remaining boards back and got a refund of £293! I was soooo happy! If I had not forced myself to do it last night by the 13th of February I would have been over their 90days returns policy. 

Also called Amazon as they had not processed a refund which I had sent back and on the shipping tracker was showing that it was delivered to them. They then said they will process my refund of £54 and should reflect in a few days hopefully 🤞. I just want to start my next lot of diy on a clean slate. 

I am really looking forward to summer as I am hoping to progress the house a bit further and make the house more functional/beautiful for next winter when it can be a bit dull and so you need any little cheering you can get. This winter really felt much brighter as the house was much improved with all the diy I managed to do last summer. Before summer though I plan to start painting inside the house in general and then I will do the construction type diy once it warms up. 

So this weekend and next weekend I will be doing the plastering course, in March I will start/complete the tiling course so by end of next summer I hope to
be able to finish off the kitchen walls. 

The centre I am attending the course is over an hour away and as the training is rather physical after a long week I tend to book a hotel for the weekend so that I am not driving out too early in the morning it also saves me driving back after a long day of training. So tonight I have a hotel booked and will head back home Sunday night after the course. I have also booked the same Friday night to Sunday morning for next week. I take this as a time to just be by myself rather than going back home to deal with household issues while trying to attend the course aswell. Training starts at 8:30am 🥱. 

Sistergold

Weekend update
Hello ladies. Just wanted to update/feedback concerning the plastering course. Well it was quite hands on as expected. Quite a lot to learn and probably not something I would just decide to do as a large project. For my own purposes seems quite adequate but on a large scale not sure if I would want to challenge myself that far? Found it quite physically challenging and one needs endurance. We attached plaster boards to walls and ceiling. We did some bonding and we also plastered the ceiling. A lot of the technical terms were just going over my head as the course tutor although very nice and hands-on did not give us any printed notes to follow. I did ask about any notes and she said we will receive a pdf through email on Wednesday 🤷‍♀️ so will read over that if it comes. Having said that I felt the course was good and will be enough for me to sort out my kitchen walls and any other work I might need to do over the years. I will need to practice and watch some your I guess. There is still one more weekend to go and more to learn so will see. I now do have an idea of how it is done and if necessary I will definitely be able to plasters done walls. 

Hope you all had a nice weekend?