Resourcefulness: The budgeter's friend

KajiKita

Lovely to hear that calm, relaxed life has been resumed in the FGs’ household. Hopefully Ash is back to his relaxed self again now. 

I’m like you and can’t bring myself to wear yellow gold - I happily own that I am bizarrely superstitious about it but whenever I do try and wear it (people have gifted me things over the years) I come over all peculiar and uncomfortable. Most odd. 

I wonder if it would be worth researching those earrings a little on bay-of-e or similar rather than scrapping them? I suspect you would get more for them that way than selling for scrap, which would help restore the EF a tiny bit 😉

KK

PennysIntoPounds

Jewellery sorting and mending sounds wonderful 😊
Definitely sell those gold earrings if you won't wear them, they'll start off your EF rebuilding in a kindly way 

themadvix

Ooh thanks Foxgloves - peridot was the answer to one of the clues I hadn’t got on a cryptic gems and minerals quiz!

rtandon27

@foxgloves - if the yellow gold earings are sentimental, would you consider having them plated in either white gold or silver so that you can get some use out of them?

EssexHebridean

Glad to hear the calm of the household has been restored and the roof looks good! 

foxgloves

Just been catching up with all your comments & contributions, for which, thanks.
@PennysIntoPounds - Yes, I think there is some potential overlap in the venn diagram between decluttering & an  'every little helps' approach to the Emergency Fund.

@KajiKita - I have seen similar earrings on the Bay of E but no watchers. I do sell on there - well, I have done in the past - but only low value items as I don't want the faff of insuring, worrying about things going missing, etc. As I have barely worn them, the daily per g gold rate will be a bonus.

@rtandon27 - Tbh, it's so long ago, I can't remember from whom I received the earrings. I don't think it was my Mum & Dad as Mum would have chosen them & she was like me, only wore silver jewellery, so they are not of sufficient sentimental value for replating. Good idea though.

foxgloves

Hello Monday Readers,
I am off to a much calmer start to the week. Although the roofing work didn't start until last Tuesday, I was feeling in a flap about it on the Monday so all I really want this week is to get back into my normal routines. A decent start on that today. Have done 2 loads of laundry, made tomorrow's packed lunch & breakfast, sorted & cleared out my bedroom chest of drawers - a few more items decluttered & done my regular Monday morning budget updates. I have also printed off & reconciled this month's credit card bill & was pleased to see that the only transactions outstanding are those which I expected to see. That will all be paid in full on Big Budget Day, well in time for avoiding any interest charges. I've also entered a competition & done a survey.
I am making veggie fajhitas tonight & think I will make a small fruit sponge for dessert to use a jar of the blackberry & pear compote I bottled back in Autumn. 
There was a short-lived break in the grey earlier, during which I spotted a small glimpse of S-U-N, but fear not, it is now raining. Glad I didn't get over-excited & rush out into the garden with my weeding trug as it would have come to a soggy end. 
Right, I am thinking that as we are several thousands of pounds lighter after last week, it is probably time to share the saga of the roof. Kettles on & loins girded, please......
F

KajiKita

< Braces self and stands firm .... >

KK

EssexHebridean

*sets out  plate of biscuits and nabs a comfy chair* 

foxgloves

Are we all sitting comfortably? Then here we are with the Tale of the Very Difficult Roofing Week Indeed.
Work started last Tuesday morning bright & early. Chief roofer very positive 'can-do' attitude which would be severely tested, as were my stress levels. You will know from earlier posts that the previous owner of Foxgloves Manor had installed one of the dreaded internal foam insulation roof coverings. When we bought the house 23 years ago, the problems with this wretched stuff weren't "a thing". We paid for a decent survey & apart from mentioning that the foam was installed, there were not mentions of problems. It was simply a type of insulation people had done back then, with various grants to offset the expense. Of course, there is a lot more known about it now with all sorts of knock-on issues such as difficulties selling one's property, some lenders not offering mortgages, etc, as it isn't possible to see the state of the roof unless it is all removed. It stops the roof breathing & is awful stuff.
Our quote included an additional £1k because of the time/labour necessary to remove the foam as it has to be sawn out by hand. So the roofers got going with with removing the tiles & sawing out foam. Mid-morning, Chief roofer came to see me with bad news. I am not going to lie, I did half expect this to happen due to the age of the house & length of time our roof has been sweating away under that damned foam. He showed me some photos of our roof timbers & they were so rotten in places, he could virtually put his thumb through them. This instantly made it a longer more involved job for them & a more expensive one for us. I should add that none of this rotten wood was visible from the inside as it was under the foam. Our loft has been perfectly dry for storing stuff - I even have a crate of vintage books up there which are untouched by moisture. So that was another £3,500 added to the cost & they got onto procuring the new beams immediately. There was no choice in the matter. Pointless felting & tiling over rotten timbers & he wouldn't have been able to give me his 15-year guarantee either. Then the heavens opened with several hours of downpour (not forecast) & they were all absolutely drenched, couldn't do any more because obviously it would have let in water. 
Wednesday dawned dry! Roofers worked till mid-afternoon & reported good progress then left. Shortly afterwards I went in the kitchen & noticed that the oven clock was off, so were the kitchen lights & a few other things I tried. I assumed it was a power cut possibly caused by the system tripping from all the power-tooling. Checked the box - yes, a tripped switch. Flicked it back up, but no use as the safety switch was down. Then, I noticed that the living room lamp was on, as was my reading lamp & a quick run round the house revealed that the bedroom sockets were also all working, but no ceiling lights or anything else. Not a power cut then. Had horrible feeling one of the roofers may have cut through a wire while sawing out insulation foam so phoned Chief Roofer. This ruled out a circuit overload as all their tools are battery powered & he was already contacting an electrician even as we were speaking. Electrician arrived & set about investigations in the loft & elsewhere. He couldn't find the problem but suggested that we use Mr F's rather awesome extension cable to run our fridge & freezer from our living room sockets to save our food stores & he'd be back first thing the next day. Of course we had no CH, as although it is gas, it uses electricity for ignition, etc, no hot water, no ceiling lights, kitchen sockets, etc. We are quite resilient types. I do a lot of swearing (I AM descended from fishwives after all!) but then get my practical head on & swing into action. We assessed what we DID have & it was more than we'd get in the usual power cut. We could charge our phones, etc, in the living room sockets, the lamps in there worked, our bedside lamps worked, we'd got the fridge & freezer running on a long cable & we could light our gas hob with a match. I have my parents' old whistling gas hob kettle so that meant we could have emergency rations of hot water & make coffee. We also found that the ignition on our gas stove (like a woodburner but without the work) was working so we could heat the room for the evening. Could have been worse, but VERY worried about what was causing the craziness. 
Thursday. Electrician returned. By then I'd dug out the paperwork from when our house was fully PAT-tested after some work in 2020. He used this to change some of the essential stuff like kitchen sockets/CH to the non-problem circuit then went off with various tester gizmos to find what was wrong with the rest of it. I know some of you have been following my MSE diary for a long time, so you may remember my tales of an unknown previous owner of Foxgloves Manor whom we call 'Mr DIY Numpty'? We honestly didn't think there was any of his handiwork left in our property. Wrong! The electrician found a length of cable to an old loft light, which for some reason, Mr Numpty for we feel sure it was he, had laid it across the loft, then boarded straight on top of it. We had no idea it was there & it didn't come to light during the PAT testing 6 years ago, so it must have been degenerating since then. The cable covering was damaged because having loft boards (& stored stuff in loft) on top of it is obviously far from ideal, plus the the electrician reckoned that all the vibrations & thumping going on above plus bits of rubble falling into the loft from the work probably altered its position slightly & it was now sufficiently unsafe to trigger the power outage on that circuit. Electrician cut off any power to the cable so it is no longer live/ in use. We are going to book him to come back & install a new loft light. Roofer paid half the cost of the electrician which I thought was very fair of him actually because there was no evidence that his team had caused the problem, more circumstance. 
Well, everyone worked like mad until knocking-off time, then a couple of hours later, Mr F went upstairs to the back bedroom (Man-Cave) & discovered......a hole in the ceiling!
Aaaaaaghhhhh! Photographed the damage & pinged it to Chief Roofer who was NOT happy. However, he got onto a plasterer straight away & the following day, he arrived to make good the damage, which of course was not paid for by us. They think it was possibly a foot which went through the plaster, but given how difficult the horribly foam-gummed tiles were to get off, it could also have been a tile which when prised, dropped from a height, corner-first. We don't know & I am not bothered about the detail, as just wanted it fixed. Mr F not very happy about needing to re-paint that area of ceiling but was mollified at the thought that he does have some of that paint shade left in the shed. 
So last week was like that old Flanders & Swan song, "The Gasman cometh"! Positives to take out of the week are that the roofing team under Chief Roofer had a can-do, solutions-based attitude, communicated well & got on with sorting out problems as they arose. We would be happy to book them when it becomes necessary to re-do our small flat roof. We were also pleased to have contact details for a local electrician who seems to like problem-solving work & he is happy to come back to sort out a new loft light. It was an opportunity to get out my power cut emergency supplies - tealight holders in optimum places to be able to see our way into the bathroom, to make sure emergency torches all working, etc, & to remind ourselves that if we can boil a kettle & cook a meal on our gas hob, plus fill a hot water bottle, we are better off than many, also of course that preparedness = resilience & it is resilience which gets one through adversity in the end, is it not? At least those elements over which we have some control.
Above all, was the relief I felt that we did have the money to cover the new roof in our Emergency Fund. Yes, it is decimated, but we had it when we needed it, & we had it because we saved it & hadn't been dipping into it for non-emergency spending. There's still the scaffolding to come down & then I hope I can enjoy some Winter gardening time & draw a line under a difficult week.
And I shall need to think about re-building our EF too.
Thanks for all the supportive comments last week, which did help.
F x