Mortgage free in Forever Home :-)

KajiKita

CCW007 said:

Every job in this house is linked and nothing can be done independently - plan is to split into two to make en suite and family bathroom including laying flooring, which can't be done until fuse board is moved from underneath the toilet, which could only be done once we rewired the downstairs, which meant taking kitchen apart to plaster... I could go on 😁

@Cheery_Daff that sounds so familiar! 

Oh wow …. I’ve previously lived in a house like that. It means you get the property cheaper as people can’t bear to take on the work, but boy is it a lot of effort and mess! I now understand why your kitchen got ripped out BEFORE Christmas! 😊

KK

Cheery_Daff

KajiKita said:

@Cheery_Daff, what’s left to do in the kitchen, dining room, bedroom? Any of them possible to knock over this year? Do you have a GANTT for any of them ….? 😉

Theoretically it's possible within about a fortnight! 😂 But the builders left 2 years ago and we've still not done it. All that's left now is 

* skirting boards downstairs

* boarding up a ridiculous window that looks into the loft upstairs (although having recently hung a curtain over it I'm far less bothered about that now 😂)

* levelling and covering an awkward bit of kitchen floor - used to be a fireplace/wall and the builders concreted it in - but level with the rest of the floor, so whatever we put on it now means that bit will be raised 🙄 There's also a dip where we've been walking over a bit of it to get into the kitchen bit. Don't really know how to sort it out so been putting it off!

* windowsills 🙄 you may have seen the ongoing windowsill saga on my thread - we're planning on making them ourselves from old stone roof tiles from the barn, so we'll probably need to wait for better weather now as we'll need to get the angle grinder etc out, and that's best done outside... Anyway, there are 6 of them, all various sizes, and of course none can be done with a single roof tile (although they are massive) so it'll be like a giant jigsaw 

Anyway, bit of a nuisance but definitely all doable this year! Probably all doable in January. Probably all doable over my Christmas holiday if I didn't want to do anything else 😂😂

KajiKita

@Cheery_Daff, re the awkward patch of kitchen floor; I would dig out c. 4” of what they have put in there and then level it back up across the whole floor. Would that work?
Actually I wonder if this is part of the problem - you are having to redo / undo work that was done incorrectly but YOU HAVE PAID FOR - I would find that hard / mentally blocking. 

I remember about the window sills 😊 and yes you need dry weather, but they will look amazing once done ❤️ Perhaps focus on one window to do first that you will get the greatest benefit from (the one that most offends you visually or you want to be able to put houseplants on) and just focus on that ONE to start with. When that looks good, it might give you the momentum to continue? Or, <whisper> give up on the stone window sills and just use timber ….? <whisper> 😉

We’ve got the next door neighbours coming round for dinner tonight. I have just retrieved the soup for the first course and the crumble for dessert from the freezer. We need to TIDY the house quite a lot 😂 Mr KK will be making the coq au vin and I need to pop out for a bottle of red for her and some small button mushrooms (forgot both during yesterday’s shopping trip for craft ales for him). I then need to work out timing for how to juggle roasties and veg around the first course … 🤔

My other main task today is then planning my year to the veg seeds I have and ordering the gaps 😊

KK

skint_spice

Nothing like visitors to speed up the tidying 😂

KajiKita

skint_spice said:

Nothing like visitors to speed up the tidying 😂

Yup! 😂

I have also repaired my work trousers as the hem had totally unravelled on one leg and the repair I did in the seat wasn’t quite mob enough so have extended that too 😊

KK

KajiKita

House has been cleaned until it squeaked! 😉
Ordered the gaps in my veg seeds … a Trachelospermum asiaticum might have also climbed in the basket, after a discussion with Mr KK, to replace the one that got blasted by 2022’s -10C episode. 
Fibre broadband install has happened, finally - delayed since mid October. Chap did a very tidy job. Madame Floof slept through it all, thankfully. Need to do set up, change passwords etc but that can wait until tomorrow. 

Table is laid. Drinks are in the fridge. 

Mr KK is deep in cooking Coq au Vin. 

My soup and dessert are defrosted. Have carrots, peas and roasties to wrangle 😊

KK

redofromstart

That all sounds rather lovely!

KajiKita

redofromstart said:

That all sounds rather lovely!

It went really well 😊 I hadn’t understood, until she shared tonight, quite how much stress my neighbour is under. She has property of various types shared with siblings but they are being very obstructive about how to deal with it all as well as manipulative and grasping (yes, I know I’m only getting one side 😉) so she is technically asset rich but somewhat cash poor and sees her father’s legacy being erased …. It’s all getting frustrating and quite emotional for her and he’s had enough of dealing with it too. 

It was nice to spoil them a bit with food, good wine (thanks to Mr KK’s boss’s Christmas present to Mr KK 😊) and some company. We’ve got to know each other well enough now that we can tease each other a bit and I feel relaxed around them both. It was a good evening 😊

KK

Cheery_Daff

KajiKita said:

@Cheery_Daff, re the awkward patch of kitchen floor; I would dig out c. 4” of what they have put in there and then level it back up across the whole floor. Would that work?
Actually I wonder if this is part of the problem - you are having to redo / undo work that was done incorrectly but YOU HAVE PAID FOR - I would find that hard / mentally blocking. 

I remember about the window sills 😊 and yes you need dry weather, but they will look amazing once done ❤️ Perhaps focus on one window to do first that you will get the greatest benefit from (the one that most offends you visually or you want to be able to put houseplants on) and just focus on that ONE to start with. When that looks good, it might give you the momentum to continue? Or, <whisper> give up on the stone window sills and just use timber ….? <whisper> 😉

Yes, a lot of the problem is a mental block! And some of the rest is that Mr Cheery really wants to keep the ancient terrazzo tiles, so whatever we do the extra bit with,  it won't match the rest of the floor 🙄 We did decide a long time ago that for now,  we were just going to fill in the bit that's being worn away and cover the concrete with carpet tiles - we even bought them! Not perfect,  but seemed like a solution that could be done relatively swiftly,  although it hasn't been 🙄😂

So that's the first thing. And skirting.  And you're right about windowsills - the obvious one is the dining room at the front (although I did wonder about staying with the bedroom to perfect the technique 😂😂)

Sorry to hear about your neighbour's woes. We have a house like that near us. Beautiful location, but it's been empty for 17 years now and is falling down.  Owned by 2 brothers and a sister apparently, and the 2 brothers apparently don't want the sister to have any money from it so they won't sell 🙄 one of the brothers died recently,  so that plan is clearly not working well for them 🙄

KajiKita

@Cheery_Daff, could you, or Mr Cheery as he’s not working, find some other old terrazzo tiles (reclamation, FBMP, The Bay of E etc) - they won’t match but at least they will be in keeping? Maybe give yourself a 3 month time limit on that and then you have to move onto the next option? Other options: as well as carpet, how about a scribed piece of hardwood, as it’s on a threshold - that could work quite well? Or go with the mismatch and deliberately try a different tile or material that flatters and tones with the terrazzo tiles - slate perhaps? 

So the dining room windowsill is the guineapig 😉 (at least you don’t have to lug the sill upstairs for that). Will you use an already ‘good’ stone for that, or use one of the not so good ones? (My questions are intending to start nudging you into visualising the result and make it more real for you, to help get you moving … 😉 If I’m being annoying, please say 😂😊). 

KK