Learning to walk before I run

Mortgage_Minimiser

Oh no, not what you need, but poor cat - hope (s)he is alright !

themadvix

Hope cat is alright and that’s the extent of the bill!

edinburgher

£230  Thank goodness for insurance. It is disgusting, a cat? Bite that turned into an abscess and burst, you can see down to the muscle. Apparently they don't stitch them due to risk of worsened infection. Crap end to the day. Tabby girl has the worst luck

themadvix

Oh poor kitty, how horrible. Hope she makes a full recovery.

CCW007

Poor cat and ouch to the cost - why do these things always seem to happen out of hours?  We changed to a vets recently with much better opening hours at weekends because everything seems to happen just after 1.00pm on a Saturday when our old vet shut for the weekend.  

LadyGnome

Poor thing that sounds nasty

edinburgher

I feel horrible but Tabby girl has been banished to the kitchen as she is oozing over everything We may let her back in to the sitting room tomorrow, but as it stands, it will take us 5 hours to run all of the throw covers through the longer synthetics cycle on the WM to get the blood off.We've tried to give her a couple of soft baskets to choose from, but they may need to be thrown out now.

Today was more positive than yesterday. The kitchen respray is finished and we now have a lovely room in the modern style (units in matte white, tiles in Worsted, a lighter grey F&B dupe). Apart from a fair bit of sweeping, mopping and wiping, they managed to finish the job pretty much without a hitch. There are one or two tiny bits that have gone awry (a socket plate that has a grey bit over it, luckily obscured by aquarium normally and a couple of small corners where the spray gun didn't quite make it to the very edge). They also seem to have accidentally sprayed a digital scale, that then miraculously made its way to the bottom of a cupboard We'll also need to replace the seal between the splashback and the worktop next to the sink. They removed this (it was ragged), but didn't seal it before leaving. All things considered, perfect to all but the pickiest of eyes and with perhaps £25 of collateral damage. I can live with that.They successfully fixed a couple of delaminated doors and managed to rehang our dishwasher door that was being held on by parcel tape

I took a proper lunch break today (I normally only take 30 minutes in an attempt to save flexi) and went with Mrs E to a local flooring shop to order replacement vinyl for the kitchen. We've paid for it and it will be fitted on 9th May, the day after Mrs E's EDD! Allowing for respray, artex removal/plastering, kitchen painting, new vinyl and having our radiator replaced with the vertical one that we have in a cupboard, we've just come in under our notional £3,000 budget. Everything is looking spick and span and while I'm not sure it would add a whole lot to the price should we come to sell, I'm definitely confident that the state of the kitchen would no longer have a potential buyer mentally discounting their offer based on work needing done.

It was also a positive end to my work week, as I am now line managing a member of our team and was able to make some suggestions around scheduling their work and prioritisation that seem to have made a tangible difference to their productivity in a very short space of time. This can only look good on my CV.

Mrs E has been paid today, so off to update my spreadsheets.

savingholmes

Sorry about the cat and the bill. Hope it heals quickly. 

The kitchen sounds fab though

edinburgher

@savingholmes - thank you - it is looking great already. FIL came round to help finish off some bits today and he was on a mission! We removed the current vertical radiator in advance of the painter coming next Thursday and he singlehandedly removed and replaced all of our existing silicone with some nice grey stuff from the basic Scr3wfix range (a bargain at about £4.50 a tube). After a bit of chat and thanking him profusely, we suggested he go and enjoy the sunshine at home in the garden. Did he follow our advice? Did he heck! He took my broken BBQ fire brick home to stick it back together with fireproof cement I think he likes a project...

So today I tried and failed to contact HMRC to reclaim the additional 1% tax that I pay for the privilege of being Scottish (i.e. extra tax relief on my SIPP contributions). It wasn't to be - Vanguard don't have a report that separates out which payments are your debit card payments and which are tax relief. Using the usual sums gave me an unexpected number (i.e. £xx.xxx, as opposed to ££.££), so I decided just to round down when I spoke to the gummint. I had to give up after 20 minutes as the queue for HMRC was interminable and I had no indication where I was in the queue. It was only £20, but still, I'm not best pleased as Dishy Rishi is now costing me an extra £33 every 4 weeks.

I have quite a lot of spare money left from my pocket money this month, so I have paid £100 into my SIPP (£125 after tax relief).

Paspatur

Edinburgher I did not even know this was a thing? Is it not counter acted by the part of your earnings you only pay 19% tax on? I don't hit 21% in semi retirement but my MPAA restricted pension of £3,200 gets topped up to £4,000 despite the fact some of my earnings are at 19% tax not 20%. May be different for you if you can show your works pension uses the 19% and 20% but personal contributions to a SIPP are from 21% taxed earnings??