And now we go again...

Greying_Pilgrim

EH - just popped in to (belatedly) wish you 'Happy New Stairs!" 😁

Thank you for your advice over at 'my pad' 🙂 yes, I agree with you wholeheartedly, MFW and DFW are for sure the friendliest, most helpful threads, full of the kindest, nicest folks.  Such a joy to be here.

Greying X

milann

The shiny car sounds beautiful…..unlike our cars which are both absolutely filthy…..never seen them so bad 😳

greenbee

redofromstart said:

The bit that gets me is that I live in thermals, the bills are high and I'm still never warm because the house is old and the central heating is inefficient.  If I was willing to just sit in the room with the fire and vegetate then I would be warm.

Maybe the next house should be a modern passivhaus standard eco-build?

savingholmes

Lovely photo. Enjoy your day out tomorrow. 

Can the work single glazed window not have an additional panel added inside? Is it against listed building status or something?

lucielle

Hope you have a lovely day. Well done on the bargains. 

L

EssexHebridean

Redo - exactly! The actual fabric of the building can make or break whether heating at a sensible cost is even achievable.  Haha Greying - happy new stairs right back at ya! (Greenbee - the very thought of living in a place like that makes me shudder! I know character can be expensive on running costs, but at least a BIT of character!) 

Milann I'm pretty sure my car will be back to her grubby self again quite soon enough - MrEH's is filthy! 

LOL SH it's four massive single glazed windows - they're something like 8' high and 5' wide, and arched, to boot. It would cost literally thousands to secondary glaze them and (ironically enough bearing in mind the conversation above) completely wreck the character of the building, too. Not even a starter!  Thankfully external temperatures are much more user friendly today and that means that the office is already at temperature - in fact I have a suspicion the heating will click off fairly soon. 

L thank you - we had a lovely night out on Saturday in spite of the railway company's best efforts at stopping us! When I booked the train tickets on Friday there was not so much as a mention of the dreaded "rail replacement bus" but by the time I checked the travel timings on Saturday morning there they were, AND they were accompanied by assorted seemingly random cancellations too, which later proved to be as a result of overhead line damage (and that was before it got windy!). In the end it needed a bus to a town a little further south, then a walk to a different station still within that town, but that then allowed us to get a train straight from there to the station we were going to, so could have been worse. 

Well wasn't it breezy last night? I spent what felt like most of the evening diving outside to try to stop my bike taking off as the wind caught its cover - ended up eventually just admitting defeat and taking the cover off - the recycle bin also had to be laid down as it didn't want to stay upright - thankfully it was only emptied last week so is completely empty at the moment. It was noticeable harder to keep the house warm too with the wind battering in at the front - we certainly now know where there are draughts!  No other issues aside from a loose bucket in the garden which had to be retrieved and tucked more firmly into a corner.

MSE Stuff:
- using the newly purchased railcard to save on the train travel
- Keeping Farmers Market spending focused - not being tempted by "ooh - that looks tasty!"
- Transforming the last chunk of veg wars swede, some of the carrots and tatties, and a couple of sweet potatoes into a big pot of mixed root mash - three tubs for the freezer, 1 to use later in the week.
- half the pack of lamb chump-end chops I got from the farmers market making an extremely tasty curry for yesterday with a portion for the freezer for me on a Saturday lunchtime - and the other half pack also heading to the freezer along with the bones from the three I used which I took the meat off of before cooking. That's the meat component of a future tagine or similar right there!
- An increase in temperatures today meaning that the gas use should drop a bit!
- banks checked and all good - although the end of month OP isn't going to be as high as I would have preferred. 
- we agreed yesterday morning that the water butt - which was sitting on some thoroughly rotten timbers - was leaning more than it had been, so we decided to tackle that before it got worse. That involved emptying it (lots of buckets) and realising once MrEH was able to lift it down that the timbers had completely had it - we'd been hoping that we might be able to repair but no, definitely not. Some lateral thinking though and we shopped from home a spare long concrete slab (one of those that's made to look like wood) which happily was precisely the right length to fit in the gap that the really rotten timber was taken from, and only slightly too long....water butt now sitting square again, not dripping as the tap is at the correct angle, and the flow of water from it is better too. 
- Also foraged some kindling yesterday morning from some bushes and trees in the alleyway behind us - they needed cutting back as the alleyway was getting blocked anyway, and one has a lot of ivy climbing up it so needed some of the weight taken out - and with the winds later on I was very glad to have dealt with that! One big plastic trug of kindling which will need sorting into "use whenever" and "set aside to dry a bit more". 

Spendiness:
- Farmer's Market was £22 spent on lamb with Peter, and £10 with Catherine for pork mince and a pack of burgers. Good value as we will get plenty of meals from that spend. 
- Top up spend at T's yesterday for tomatoes, apples and a loaf of very well reduced wholemeal bread which will do me nicely for toast or indeed sandwiches. £2.35
- All spending on Saturday evening will of course be from personal spends. That was very tasty pizzas for tea, and a couple of rounds of drinks each. well worth it to spend some time catching up with pals who we don't see all that often while they were down here!
- £46 diesel into MrEH's car yesterday
- I am expecting MrEH to feed his oyster on the way back tonight too - in fact I was surprised he hadn't done it this morning but that may have been time-related if he had enough on it to let him travel. 
- I am reminded that we are out of crisps and so MrEH will probably swing by somewhere to get some tomorrow morning.

Plans for the week:
- I was considering a trip to Lincolnshire on Friday but apparently there will be little flying and the forecast is pretty grim so it's been suggested I defer until the following week which I will do.
- As far as I know MrEH will be in London today and Wednesday - as from a couple of weeks time he will have to add an extra day a week to that which will add to our travel costs of course. 
- I must keep my eye open for the return tickets to go on sale for the trip I bought the outward ones for recently - I'm aiming to check daily so I can pounce and try to get a similar bargain for coming home to the ones for the way up - we'll see. 
- I need to start putting together a proper year planner as I'm starting to get a bit frazzled about remembering dates - I also want to properly plan in the airshows I intend doing this year as well, and think about getting tickets sorted where needed. I currently have tickets booked but not yet paid for for Air Tattoo, and tickets booked and paid for to the new show at Sywell in June which is starting to sound epic! 
- MrEH will be rugby training tomorrow evening, and may have a game on Saturday depending if one of the three teams he now plays for can use him! 
- generally, keep my head down and  my money in my purse! 

greenbee

One of the nicest houses I saw when looking this time was a very modern eco-build. Stunning vaulted ceilings, thoughtful use of natural materials, and an ambient temperature that was comfortable without you thinking either warm or cool. Pity about their taste in kitchens, but that's easily fixed I was sad at the time that it didn't work out but later discovered that the fields around it are regularly covered in pig arks, so it was a narrow escape - I expect that's why they were selling last year  

EssexHebridean

This is very much an "each to their own" I suspect - the top thing on our list when we brainstormed what we were looking for was "not a new build!" We didn't view anything newer than about a 1960's build as far as I can think - although with the benefit of hindsight I am now quite grateful that we didn't end up with the section of an old Hall dating back to the 1600's, in part! (Stunning house, but would have been a nightmare when anything needed doing as listed, and the heating bills would I suspect have been )  I think you did definitely have a lucky escape on yours too - pigs do have a quite spectacularly "unique" scent! 

LadyWithAPlan

Wow I never knew pig arks could be a danger whilst house searching .... 

I am with you on new builds - i dont like them - they are often cheap, thin walls etc ... i am sure there are some fabulous  new high end eco-build  architect projects out there  - they often have them in the evening standard but they come with serious costs and leasehold service charges ..
1600's! Probably would have an issue with limestone as well as sometimes previous owners of such homes have done crazy things like concrete over limestone etc - causing lots of issues. 

greenbee

I did look at a medieval place too - but the lack of level floors and the need to crawl on hands and knees to get to one bedroom meant it was impractical The eco build was really well done and would have involved a lot less work than this place. But one of the advantages to moving back 'home' is that I can find out the important stuff - like who the landowners are locally, what they do, and what they are like to live near