Buying a little piece of Middle England; Manifesting my way to mortgage free.

debtfreewannabe321

KajiKita said:

Gah … that room just keeps giving doesn’t it …

With lifting plasterboard, if it comes to it (I sincerely hope it doesn’t!), make yourself a support out of 2x1 that can wedge it in place with from the floor to ceiling. Mr KK works as a chippy and that’s what he does when he has to lift sheets alone. Also, cut the sheets in half - yes, more joins to fill and sand etc, but half the weight! 

KK 

Thank you for this I'll bear this in mind. We are tackling it today 🙈🤞🏻.
We've put in our baskets at the big orange Diy shop, coving, picture rails and a ceiling rose and it is already coming up at £160 😱 ... however where we pulled the built in wardrobe out there is coving/ picture rails there from when it was originally built and it looks fab so we are restoring it all 😁 regardless of the cost. It's those finishing touches that make it look great I think. I have around 40-50 quid on the voucher left and £200 in the budget for diy too so hopefully enough to do everything aside from the window and floor in her room 🤞🏻🤞🏻🤞🏻.

I'm donning my diy dungarees today. I'm on finishing the steaming of the wallpaper off job and DP is going to tackle moving the light which is about a foot and a half away from the window rather than in the middle of the room 🤔 unsure why they did this. But he's channeling that back to where it belongs. And he will tackle the dodgy ceiling. We are going to wallpaper the ceiling again with anaglypta wallpaper and the add lightweight coving/ ceiling rose after and hopefully that will be the end of the dodgy ceiling. We shall see though. Diy never seems to be straight forward in an old house 🤣.
DD just wants plain white walls for her posters so I'm hoping the decorative touches I'm adding will make it come alive from the current white box it is at the moment.
Also need a new curtain rail. The one up is too thin and wobbly (tbf it has been up nearly 50 years it's done it's job) I will have a look in dun3lm for that as we have one close by and I think they do a good range that I can see in person.

I'll report back.... hopefully with a fixed ceiling in tact. 😃🤞🏻

debtfreewannabe321

The ceiling is still in tact🤗 . DP and I have stripped all the wallpaper, he's channeled into the ceiling to move the ceiling light away from the window also removed a pull cord that was excess and a couple of other electrical bits. And he's up there making the ceiling secure right now. We hopefully do not need to replace anything with it. He's screwing it in, using tape to secure cracks and we will skim over it and then use anaglypta wallpaper on the ceiling (I wasn't a fan of that stuff till we moved here and it is on EVERY ceiling, but actually looks really sweet and differentiates rooms and styles). The wallpaper came off nicely and it felt like the house was releasing it to me so it could breathe again, have a good clean, before being dressed once more in something beautiful. It is funny, all the way around the room you can see where they ripped the picture rails out that we are now going to reinstate funny how tastes and styles change huh.

I am pricing bits up whilst I can hear him drilling into something up there 😬 The walls need cleaning as does the ceiling. Then we will work our way down filling and making good on all the cracks and unevenness.  We will pop to the orange diy shop and find coving we like as well as a ceiling rose. The online shop says they have some in stock so I would rather go have a look in person. If DP finishes early enough we can go this afternoon, and I also found a decorator's centre that sells the wallpaper we like so can pop in there too. However if he's busy until late I would rather not disturb mid job...we can do it tomorrow instead. Hoping with our budget we can afford to do the coving, ceiling rose, wallpaper, picture rails and some cheap white paint this month (walls need mist coating) as well as make good with some plywood around the stairwell that has been built into the corner of her room (going up into our room in the loft, the corner part takes up some space in her corner). I may need to leave the rest until next month though as I think those bits will be expensive enough. Then next month I can afford nice curtain rails, plug sockets and the paint. I may have enough to buy these bits if I shift the EF money over to pay for it but we'll see and also if I shop around. Everything is so expensive these days.......in the budget I have £45 on a gift card still. £100 cash still from Dec budget, £200 from Jan budget (and a possible £100 EF if I don't pay it across to the EF). So £345-445. Considering the wallpaper is nearly £90 of that 😬 it won't go as far as I had hoped. I shall report back though, I do love a challenge, and I would love to bring this room in on less than £1k (this will include a new window unit as well as new wooden windowsill in this price too). 

KajiKita

So glad that the ceiling isn’t as bad as you thought! Phew … 😊

I think the reason for the light being a couple of feet back from the window rather than in the centre of the room is because there would have been expected to be a dressing table - during the day the light would fall on the face from the window and after dark from the bulb. 

You’re doing well 😊👏

KK

debtfreewannabe321

KajiKita said:

So glad that the ceiling isn’t as bad as you thought! Phew … 😊

I think the reason for the light being a couple of feet back from the window rather than in the centre of the room is because there would have been expected to be a dressing table - during the day the light would fall on the face from the window and after dark from the bulb. 

You’re doing well 😊👏

KK

Ahhh. Makes sense...no dressing table in there now though and we have a central light now 👏🏻. It looks much better placed now.

We've been and bought everything we need to start properly on the job tomorrow. The decorating centre couldn't promise delivery within a week which we totally understood as only nutters like us use their Xmas break to do diy 🤦🏻‍♀️ so we went off to the orange Diy shop and we found a good replacement which we thought would look just as lovely 🤞🏻👏🏻 I've totted up all spends so far and we are at £286, for wallpaper, paste, coving, ceiling rose, picture rails (we couldn't match the original so have to replace the old with new all the way round but it matches the coving which is nice), we have screws, fuse switches (? Not sure what for) and we have wall plugs and some other 'bits' like glue etc for starting the job. Vouchers all spent and what else I spent I got 3% CB from JD app. 

Rest time now. Then tomorrow we'll forge ahead and hopefully have the back of it broken before end of the weekend 😁🤞🏻
I've got the window on order too and have spotted a radiator in the diy shop to replace the old one. 

debtfreewannabe321

Dinner is cooking, I forgot to buy chips so have made some wedges.
Done my money shuffling about so I can't accidentally spend money assigned for something else. 
Diy budget is getting smaller and smaller 🥴 however the wallpaper we picked up was actually half the price of the other nice one I wanted so technically £45 back into the pot 😃👏🏻

LadyWithAPlan

SOA looks great and healthy ! 

On the DD light you can get some amazing light up makeup mirrors - with adjustable light for day /evening 

I saw Aldi has some ski stuff for adults /kids - might be worth you checking out as well 

ladybird1106

Another key reason of why are ceiling lights not central also is to obscure shadow appearing on the curtains when someone is undressing in the inside of the room. This is the main and primary reason why usually old houses lights were wired and positioned at the corners of the windows.

Love 🐞

debtfreewannabe321

From my initial goals on here nearly a year ago! 😊

AIMS FOR PAYING OFF MORTGAGE

My aim is to pay off £9900 over and above the usual mortgage direct debit this year. 

Not achieved - if we hadn't moved however I think I would have reached around £5k! Nevermind there is always next year.

OTHER MONEY SAVING GOALS

I would once again like an emergency fund of one month's wages. Back when I did my MSE debt free diary, £1000 was my goal, I think £1500 would be a better goal this time round so we have enough to pay our bills for one month should we need it. Achieved this have almost doubled what I initially wanted (and had FLD not passed we had achieved £3k).

I don't want to be in the red again this year on my partner's overdraft! Achieved 👏🏻

MORTGAGE BALANCE £99k...it is now £118.600 🤦🏻‍♀️🤣 however we got to move much sooner than I ever thought we could and we're all so much happier so 💕 'nuff said. We own over £50% of this house and if I go by what RM are currently selling houses on the street (and surrounding streets) for then we own closer to 60%. Interest on my mortgage when I first started this diary was less than it is now but that is because the mortgage was less. Currently we're paying around £9.25 a day 😬🥴 which seems a crazy amount would love to see this dip below £9...baby steps and all. 

I also wanted to up our income. DP has done that. He was bringing home approximately £1700 a month with quarterly bonuses of around another pay cheque each time. And now he brings home approximately £2500 + expenses which comes to anywhere from £300-400 on top of that. I've also doubled my income from the beginning of the year - thanks to moving because there genuinely was no jobs to be had where I used to live without transport 👏🏻 

All in all a good year financially. 

I was complaining about the Diy in my initial posts as we were on our third house in a row. Umm.... we're now on our fourth 🤦🏻‍♀️🤣 I shall try to not moan too much about diy but I can't promise anything 🤣🥴🤦🏻‍♀️.
 

CrazyBee787

Martin would be pround that you have got that EF together, as that should be a priority of MOP. Good luck for next year on MOPs.

CrazyBee787

P.A Also you have inspired me to prepare a budget and goals for the beggining of next year, I will hopefully do this today. Thanks.