Cheery's path to fulfilment - finishing the DIY, looking after myself, appreciating the garden 🌻

greenbee

I think I can still get the grant Cheery, as long as I do all the other bits first so that the EPC stacks up at re-assessment. Which is why I want my neighbour to look at the calculations and see whether we can get round the sitting room issue.

TBH if they're prepared to put it through with the kitchen numbers as they are, I don't see why they can't do it for the sitting room. I'm happy to commit to three tall radiators in the kitchen (I guess I should do a rough kitchen plan first!) but not to K3 (triple panel triple convector) in the sitting room. If they'd just been longer/taller but fitting in the current spaces with the existing pipework I might have considered it, but the K3s are bulky and ugly, even when painted and won't suit the room. I could look at cast iron radiators as an alternative (they work well with low temperatures), although that would be expensive.

It's probably worthwhile seeing what more you can do to improve the house in terms of warmth anyway - and for old buildings it's a good idea to run heating low and steady as they're not designed for the high temperatures we live at nowadays!

Cheery_Daff

I shall keep an eye on how you get on greenbee!

Not much chance of us running the temps too high here 😬 Thwrmostat set to 16 but hasn't said anything above 12 all day. Stuck the fan heater on in the living room in the end and now taking a hot water bottle to bed 😂

Need a list for tomorrow, I've got the day to myself and don't want to waste it. Although there's set to be snow overnight so there's a small chance Mr C won't go out - very small though. Our neighbour visitors who were coming for tea tomorrow texted to say one of them has a rotten cold - offered to come anyway but especially given the situation with Mr C's dad we've rearranged for a couple of weeks time instead.

Might have a day off the Internet and see if i can get some stuff done.

greenbee

It seems they have to use higher temps for their calculations and expect living rooms to be 21, bedrooms 20 and bathrooms 22. Much hotter than I want it to be!

themadvix

Much hotter then we wanted it too, but the grant is for the house, not the person and the house has to be suitable for anyone moving in. It’s frustrating, but sensible really (even if it does mean our airing cupboard completely full of an oversized hot water tank).

Cheery_Daff

Indeed - understandable but rather vexing.

Anyway, I didn't write my list, and here I am in the Internet 😬 but the day is still young!

MORNING

⭐ yoga

⭐ washing on & hung up

⭐ banking and finance

⭐ blog post

EARLY AFTERNOON

⭐ lunch

⭐ batch cooking

⭐ get started on cushion cover

⭐ 15 mind tidying craft room

LATE AFTERNOON

⭐ 15 mind in study

⭐ flute practice

⭐ pack for weekend away

⭐ bath & wash hair

😊 that'll probably do for a plan 😂

Cheery_Daff

JusJust popping in with a financial update. Amounts remaining in the discretionary spending pots, with 9 days of the month left.

Food & household: £14.54/£350

Diesel & parking: £122.77

Joint treats: £85.35/£200

My treats: £41.45/£150

Mr C treats: £51.20/£150

Not sure what happened in the food pot, completely taken our eyes off the ball. We've done four shops in the £40-50 range, and apparently a whole load of top ups. Need to just focus on what we have in stock!

Cars should be ok - Mr C filled one this morning and the other is about three quarters full. We're away this weekend, and I have 4 days in the office (although staying overnight once so only 3 trips). Enough in the pot for another couple of tanks though.

Pleased to see Mr C spending his treats budget for once!

In terms of the big pots...

ANNUAL BILLS

Cars: £567.36 (next thing is an MOT in May)

LPG: £475.22 - we'll probably need a tank in March, paid in April so all fine

House insurance: £900 - about to sort that out so can hopefully transfer a decent wodge to longer term savings

SAVINGS POTS

Holidays: £912 - going away this weekend but it won't be wildly expensive

Home & garden: £482.43 - the £200 heat pump refund will go back into here

Dentist & medical: £385.42 - I'm having a filling on Monday

Presents: £91.35 - next birthday is the end of March so all good

LONGER TERM SAVINGS: £2640

Not looking too bad, this time always feels a bit ropey with all the insurances/multiple LPG tanks but not too bad.

Right. Off to take a deep breath and sort out the house insurance. I've already got quotes, just need to check they've made the right assumptions, sign up, then cancel the old one (they're not even getting the chance to offer me a reduction, I'm too annoyed with them!)

Cheery_Daff

Making progress!

Washing is hung up, and new house insurance has been purchased, hooray! £553, so pretty much half the cost of the JL renewal (£1163). Happy with the cover, includes plenty of bells and whistles and acknowledges that we have trees not too far from the house, and doesn't cover the outbuildings, which is good.

I've logged in and downloaded all the documents, and emailed them to both me and Mr C (and I'll print the main one with the phone numbers on next week - need to add fixing/replacing our home printer to the list too). Have also downloaded the confused app - bought through there but didn't go through TCB this time, because I'm spreading things around - one car insurance through CTM (25% off in the cafe and pizza express etc, plus about £50 cashback from TCB I think), one through confused with TCB (for about £40 cashback I think), and this one through confused without TCB (for one free drink a month plus a £20 voucher).

Not too bad!

Just need to ring JL and cancel, which I'm not looking forward to, but I can at least put it off because my phone lost all its charge while I was messing around with the insurance, so I'm going to do a bit of cooking first.

Incidentally, the new insurer let me opt out of autorenewal which was nice, so I did - although I then had a crisis of confidence (what if anything happens to me in the next year? Mr C will be better with it on autorenew, whatever the cost!) so I might opt back in…

Anyway, no more decisions til after dinner :lol:

Cheery_Daff

Oh, and we had £900 in the insurance pot, so that's a spare £346.96 to the longer term savings pot, which now stands at £2986.96

Cheery_Daff

More progress. A LOT of veg has been cut up, and I've got a couple of different dishes on the go for the freezer. One's in prep for our visitors who've been postponed - I'll just be able to defrost then heat. The other is something I've not made before, but want to make for visitors, so I'm doing as a trial run.

JL have at least maintained their no quibbling reputation. Rang the number, recording said they offer best price first time so there's no haggling or negotiation, and it's quickest to do live chat. Tried live chat, gave policy number, name, date of birth, and said I'd like to cancel renewal - and the next message said 'I've done that for you, we'll send you a letter'. 😱😃 Very refreshing after the lengthy time I spent on the phone trying to cancel the car insurance and arguing because they were desperate to negotiate.

I'll definitely cancel things with John Lewis again 😂

That might be it for admin today!

beanielou

Well done.