Small steps lead to big changes...

jwil

WinterWarrior said:

No, but they did love a very swirly peaked plaster …all ceilings, kitchen and hall walls. It was a nightmare to paint. The living room had plaster mouldings at either side of the fireplace …the kind you could sit a nice effigy on 🤣 They were the first things that got pulled off … it did have a really wonderful fireplace though, I’ve missed it ever since I moved. 

Why on earth did you decorate, it sounds lovely!     

jwil

Loving all the weird and wonderful bathroom colours!  Because we are not the type to regularly update our decor, I definitely want to go for something fairly classic so that it doesn't obviously date it.

I'm definitely going to look at the panels, thanks everyone who recommended them, they weren't really on my radar before!  I love the thought of not having to try and clean grout!

jwil

Today's PAD £6

Jan - £141
Feb - £139
March - £89
April £149
May - £79
June - £270
July - £32

in_need_of_direction

We redid our bathroom last year. I was advised against panels as due to the odd shape of my house, the bathroom has 3 exterior walls so dampness may have been an issue

savingholmes

Good luck with your bathroom choices.

We had aqua bathroom suite in a previous house and I think navy before that.

dawnybabes

No one seems to have had a fetching yellow bathroom suite that we had in my first house, complete with orange tiles / accessories ……. 

jwil

in_need_of_direction said:

We redid our bathroom last year. I was advised against panels as due to the odd shape of my house, the bathroom has 3 exterior walls so dampness may have been an issue

Thank you, that's something to bear in mind and ask about.  We've 2 exterior walls on ours.

savingholmes said:

Good luck with your bathroom choices.

We had aqua bathroom suite in a previous house and I think navy before that.

Thank you.  It's funny, so many different colours in the past.

dawnybabes said:

No one seems to have had a fetching yellow bathroom suite that we had in my first house, complete with orange tiles / accessories ……. 

That's not too far from what we've got - yellow suite, peach tiles (with green flowers on some) and khaki green marbled floor.  Bright orange would probably be quite headache inducing!

jwil

DH has been annoying me today, I'm hormonal so he won't be able to do anything right   

Bag of rags (genuine rags, cut up t-shirts etc).  For some reason there was a bottle of WD40 in there which had leaked.  I washed the rags twice, and they still came out greasy and stinking (and I then had to clean the washing machine).  I say we might as well bag and bin them.  He says no, they might come in handy and he'll put them in the garage. 🙄😡  We are not short of cleaning cloths, and we also have plenty of ragged towels or tshirts that could be cut up if we needed to!  This is what I'm up against 🤦‍♀️

Anyway, we went in to the library this morning and saw little jwil's artwork.  It was lovely to see

I wanted to get some change so we went somewhere with arcade games where you can change up notes for coins. Did that, and had a little play on the 2p machines  

I measured up the bathroom and went into Wickes to have a look and pick up a brochure. It appears our bath is a few cm shorter than their standard ones which is a bit of a challenge.  Will have to look around a bit more.

Came home and DH has finally looked through the toys that have been left around for ages. Sometimes it's worth getting in a strop   So that pile will finally leave the house and I can get access to finish sorting.  I did some sorting and tidying upstairs in our room.

jwil

I've been having another play with my retirement figures, looking at how much I'll need for different options (i.e. taking pension early, trying to save enough to not take the pension early, and various combinations of the two).  I've also been juggling around different accounts and moving money, so my figures might look a lot different this month.  I'm streamlining a lot, to have everything in a handful of accounts rather than dotted about.  It was a nice surprise to find my total was more than I thought!

So I've rejigged my spreadsheet to account for all of this.  I've added together my debts, the mortgage, and an estimate for the work I want to do on the house, as well as the 'best case' scenario for how much I'll need to retire early and not take my pension early.  I've then subtracted my savings and my AVC contributions, and that gives me a number to aim for.  It's a very scary £295k at the moment, but considering over £90k is the mortgage, and I've worked on a figure of £80k for the work on the house, the reality is it probably won't be so scary.  It doesn't account for DH's contributions to the work on the house either.  Because it's the scenario that gives me the most in retirement, I could manage on less too.

My thinking is that it should go down quite quickly because of the mortgage payments anyway, and I can adjust the figure as and when we get any of the work done on the house.  If I treat it like one big debt, then it will be easy to see how close I am to achieving my goal.

My retirement countdown starts here: £295,307.14 to go

beanielou

Whispers.
I would sneak the bag out of the garage.