Eating a Vegetarian Elephant

Chiglepig

I don't think there has been anything financially significant to report over the last week - oh apart from investments recovering a wee bit.

But progress is being made to start the upstairs renovation - three (big) bags of books and a box of bric-a-brac to the charity shop yesterday, and gift aid added. Today the garage of doom is being emptied, four piles;

• dump
• charity
• it's got two weeks to sell, then charity
• it deserves it's place in the garage
  

Once that's done, we can plumb the garage for a dog shower and empty the cupboad of despair in the study.

The study is the first of the renovations, completely re plastered, cupboard turned into fitted wardrobe with new doors, new carpet and curtains, it's being re designated a guest room. Then we can start on what is now the guest room which becomes the temporary master before being turned into a study/work space. Finally the master/en suite will be remodelled.

SandyShores

Sounds amazing Chiglepig, a lot of planning needed there, but it will be fantastic when its completed.

powerspowers

Good luck with the garage! It sounds like you have a good plan and a fair bit of work ahead of you! 😄

Karmacat

Absolutely, best of luck with that - sounds like you've thought long and hard about it, and you're going to have a place that's much more to your liking  

Also loving the piles - two weeks to sell then charity is especially good.

Cheery_Daff

Goodness Chigle, some epic renovations there! Sounds like you need some kind of map to keep track just of which room is going to be used for what! How long is all this going to take?? 

Chiglepig

Thanks all, @Cheery_Daff, it only really began to make sense to me this week - it's a bit of chinese puzzle - moving one thing to be able to do something else. How long it will take depends on the availability of builders/ trades people etc, so we could be looking at well over a year, which is why it's taken until now to even begin to plan! (we've been in the house since 2014, and had most of the downstairs done by the end of 2016 - the upstairs has always felt just a bit too complicated).

Anyway because it's Reading week and I booked leave, between the two of us, Mr C and I have emptied the garage. There's a car full for the tip (booked slot in five minutes!), another three large shopping bags for a different charity shop, and a small pile of things for DD to list if she ever gets up today . All that's left are the garden furniture for winter storage, my painting and decorating box, the Christmas lights and three bikes (one of those will go once it's been serviced). Next job is the  study cupboard so that we can see how much space we have to play with.

In financial news, Mr C got his winter fuel payment letter (he's embarrassed at being so old!).

I seem to be unable to get into either YouGov or Populus - no idea why, but my nectar points are now worth £92.41 - not bad since I haven't been doing the main shopping for a couple of months now.

SandyShores

Amazing nectar points Chiglepig, I'm almost at £50 now.  I feel like I should use the points up as I'm always worried about getting hacked when its so much.  Apparently there's no nectar double up this year, so I'll spend the points on groceries and put the cash into my xmas saver.  Good going on the garage.  My task this week is to have another sort out there - its garage tetris I'm afraid - there's plenty of room really but its all spread out in such odd places at the moment.

Chiglepig

SandyShores said:

 its garage tetris

 I read that about the nectar double up last week, because that had been my plan, but it will still be a few nice extras and an additional mortgage OP. It's more than I would usually get, I did really well on bonus points when they changed the app, and I had a couple of relatively large nectar canvas points, 750 was the largest!

I'm picking up my new glasses today - definitely not a no spend day

Chiglepig

Feeling very out of sorts, my glasses weren't right - they're reading glasses, but only the right hand side of the reading test page was clear. So they have to go back, and that's another week, plus I won't be able to be as flexible about picking them up. On the plus side, the level of service I got is why I like going to a small independent chain rather than one of the big guys.

Theatre tonight, so that should cheer me up too.

themadvix

Sorry to hear that they weren’t right Chiglepig but glad they are sorting them for you.

 Enjoy the theatre tonight - what are you seeing?