Learning to walk before I run

Baileys_Babe

Overnight the baby slept in our room, we only used baby monitors during the day or when the baby had gone to bed but before we had gone to bed.

edinburgher

@Busydoingnothing - that's not harsh - it's a completely accurate representation of our circumstances at present! I have basically filled 2 credit cards with £14k of 0% borrowing, which is just under 50% of my available credit (I also have an empty card with a £15k limit that I keep around for large planned purchases). Between this money, additional borrowing and savings, we have £75k sitting waiting for the work. I'm not planning on taking out any more credit unless it will ensure completion of the building work. Although we just bought new sofas using 0% finance While I'm aware that that is quite a bit of borrowing, it's not particularly complicated and it's not as if we have spent it all, it's just sitting around at the mo.

Loft conversion and extension are still planned (waiting on a building warrant), although I'm not sure that we can afford both at the same time. One possible option might be to take out a £25k personal loan and then remortgage in 3 years once all work complete to pay off all outstanding finance. To be honest, I think we'd be at the squeaky side of affordability to do that. I would, however, be comfortable that we would make our money back. We stay in a very popular (overpriced) suburb of Glasgow with great schools and 4 bedroom houses aren't all that common. I believe the loft conversion will basically pay for itself in equity terms. *edit: thank you for inspiring a conversation in edinburgher towers - we have decided that we're definitely not willing to borrow more at this point.

I've had some good feedback on this thread for what to do if we can only afford the loft (basically along the lines of pay off the credit cards) and we will decide for once what we plan to do once we've got a few quotes in. Getting quotes has been impossible without a building warrant package, so only really got fingers in the air at the moment.

We're in an annoying "in the middle" place where we have managed to raise quite a lot of money, but perhaps not quite enough money! We have managed to overhaul our budget quite a bit though and this means that the additional borrowing is affordable. Since starting this diary I've added c. £240/month of childcare vouchers to our monthly expenses, as well as £200/month worth of credit card repayments. Even with this, we're still c. £500/month better off and I'm keen to save more on groceries and household bills. Justification, justification tldr I borrow more readily than I save

@Baileys_Babe - DD1 is now a wonderful sleeper - 20:00-07:00 like clockwork. It wasn't always that way, however, and we only managed to keep her in with us for about 3 months because she was such a light sleeper. It then took us the better part of 2 years before we were able to harden our hearts and apply some gentle controlled crying until she got into the swing of things Add to that the fact that we are both occasionally anxious parents (to a normal degree, not super neurotic) and a baby monitor is worth its weight in gold. In fact, DD1 still uses her non-functioning camera aged 6 because she likes the classical lullaby it's stuck on

After shopping around extensively (4 different shops in one day and a lot of online checks), we have purchased two sofas to replace the big old leather corner group that used to work really well in our 22' tenement sitting room. We have had it for just over a decade and while it has been very good to us, it has lost its shape quite a bit and blocks off the kitchen door, meaning that you have to do an awkward shimmy around the back of it to get between the living room and the kitchen. It has been a PITA for the last 6 years and this is intended as a way of making the downstairs feel less cramped without building work being required! They should get here in about 3 months

Alchemilla

Ooh lovely new sofas! 
They must be good ones if they're taking three months to arrive

edinburgher

@Alchemilla - nothing beats a good sit   They looked great to me, archetypally comfy. We were quite picky when choosing sofas, which is difficult when you're in one of the sheds and the salesperson is a "cling on", the Queen's gardener uses that one etc. Still, we managed to be polite but firm in terms of our browsing and tested out a good 10+ sofas before making our decision. They're made in the UK as well, FWIW. I also discovered that a tired 6 year old is a brilliant and honest sofa reviewer.

Alchemilla

edinburgher said:

@Alchemilla - nothing beats a good sit   They looked great to me, archetypally comfy. We were quite picky when choosing sofas, which is difficult when you're in one of the sheds and the salesperson is a "cling on", the Queen's gardener uses that one etc. Still, we managed to be polite but firm in terms of our browsing and tested out a good 10+ sofas before making our decision. They're made in the UK as well, FWIW. I also discovered that a tired 6 year old is a brilliant and honest sofa reviewer.

Oh my golly goodness she's six!

edinburgher

Oh yes, will be 7 in May and remains the apple of our eyes

South_coast

edinburgher said:

It has been a PITA for the last 6 years and this is intended as a way of making the downstairs feel less cramped without building work being required! 

Sounds much better value than an extension right now 🤣!

edinburgher

I have been swallowing frogs today

Firstly, I've had a conversation with our insurance broker and they have obtained quotes for life insurance to cover the bigger, longer mortgage and also quotes to cover loss of earnings (looking at Family Income Benefit Plans and also lump sum insurance to meet the same purpose). The upshot of this is that what we want is certainly available and that this will cost in the region of £24-27/mth extra depending on what we go for. There isn't much in it, so may leave us slightly overinsured by selecting level cover instead of decreasing for the non-mortgage part. At this point, we should be insured up the wazoo and I will have done everything I can to manage risk via financial instruments I'm quite confident that I can strip this money from somewhere else in the budget so that our overall spending remains the same.

Secondly, after 3-4 failed attempts, I abandoned the leaking taps and got "a man" to do it. As well as being stressed out about the fact that I'd employed the poulation of a small nation just to process all the returns of inappropriate parts that I hard ordered, I noticed last night that the tap was dripping hot water. I figured this might put stress on the boiler (as well as wasting gas and water), so resolved to get this sorted. Mrs E found various names off local FB groups and one of these was pretty modern (online booking system like a restaurant, turned up early less than 12 hours after I booked them at 11 o'clock last night). They were able to find suitable replacements at a plumber's merchant and had the problem resolved in about 45 minutes start to finish (including trip to the plumber's merchant). Jesus wept at the parts vs. labour price, but it was a next day job, they showed up early and I succeeded in casually extracting the details of the plumber's merchant from them. Next time I'll know where to go I'm counting this as a pyrrhic victory (as I had been doing the right thing to repair them, just with the wrong parts) and I suppose sometimes you need to pay for information (like the best suppliers). Anyway, job done.

Not planning on spending any more money

Also, don't laugh, but I've been playing about with the OP calculator! Apparently each £2/mth OP would knock 1 month off my mortgage

badmemory

edinburgher said:

Also, don't laugh, but I've been playing about with the OP calculator! Apparently each £2/mth OP would knock 1 month off my mortgage

I'd grab that with both hands.  Back in the supposedly good old days I was doing a 50% overpayment for over 10 years to get 8 years knocked off my mortgage.  It's no wonder house prices shot up when the mortgage rates shot down.  I just worry that they may shoot up again & a lot of people will be in a lot of trouble.

I think there will be a lot of people envious of your plumber!!

Watty1

Pleased to read plumbing issues resolved.  Albeit at a price.