The Ongoing Saga of Ruby Trying to Own A Home

ruby_eskimo

Hello, new home, new thread.  

If this is your first time here, welcome, I'm Ruby and together with my husband Mr Eskimo, we're on a journey to be mortgage free.  We bought our first house in 2017 and made quite a big dent in the mortgage over that time, mostly due to some inheritance money and taking advantage of a very low interest rate over the last 3 years.  

Exactly a week ago we moved into what we're calling the "Working Life" house - basically where we'll be until we retire, barring any major  unforeseen life changing issues.  The house is about 30% bigger than our last one, and needs a lot of updating and renovating but we've got a list of priorities and know that it doesn't all have to be completed in one go.  We bought this house to a) get some more space as we're both working from home almost full time and sharing an office just wasn't cutting it anymore and b) to futureproof if we need to have parents move in with us to support their care. 

So this diary is a way of me tracking the highs and lows of trying to pay off our mortgage quicker than the current projection and renovate the house in a frugal and sustainable way.

I know you all want to know the numbers so as of September 2024:

Outstanding Mortgage: £365,000
Time to Go: 28 Years

Those are some very scary numbers to me and ideally I'd want to cut at least 5 years off that projection, so this is going to be a long journey.  There's very little room in the budget for hefty overpayments so we're going to be relying on the famous Tilly Tidies and just chucking things at it where we can. 

South_coast

Ooh, a new diary as well as a new home 😀! 

Good luck with the next chapter, looking forward to hearing about your progress x

VintageHistorian

Congrats on the new diary - I have bookmarked!

beanielou

Happy shiny new diary. 

ruby_eskimo

Thanks everyone for following over from the old place.  

Well we've been here just over a week and we're staring to get there.  Back to work after 3 weeks off has been a bit of a shock to the system but not as bad as I was expecting.  There is lots of change going on so I thought I'd come back to a slew of resignations but so far it appears that hasn't happened.  My boss is back from leave next week so I'm sure I'll find out more then.

On the house front, we had a builder round last night to quote for a few things including a new bathroom.  We have a separate toilet to the bath and sink upstairs (typical 1960's house) and want to knock the wall down and make it one big bathroom.  Will see what he comes back with early next week.  On the same vein we have a design appointment at a bathroom company tomorrow to see what our options are and then we'll source our own fixtures and fittings when we come to actually getting it done.  Have another builder coming next week to quote again and then we'll have to work out what it is we're going to do.  We have the money saved already and last night's builder says he has availability in 4 weeks so we could have it all done by Christmas maybe?  Not going to hold out much hope but would be nice!

Still lots more unpacking to do but tonight is book club night so an opportunity to not be surrounded by boxes and dodging insultation falling on my head!

debtfreewannabe321

I'm surrounded by boxes too Ruby, think my move was about a few days or so after yours. Also a doer upper only we've no money saved for the build work on ours. Will bookmark and follow along again to hear about your progress 😊

ruby_eskimo

debtfreewannabe321 said:

I'm surrounded by boxes too Ruby, think my move was about a few days or so after yours. Also a doer upper only we've no money saved for the build work on ours. Will bookmark and follow along again to hear about your progress 😊

Oh @debtfreewannabe321 - popping over to your diary now!

ruby_eskimo

This weekend was spent decluttering the built in wardrobes in our main bedroom, and it really did take all weekend.  I don't know who installed them but my goodness they definitely didn't intend on them ever coming out again.  After unscrewing every single screw DH had to saw a section in half to get enough purchase to actually remove something so we could start taking it apart piece by piece.  There was also a complication with some inbuilt wiring (there were in-built power sockets) which looked more than a little dodgy.  Hopefully our electrician will be coming this week so we can get him to take a look.  After hours of work, it's now in pieces in our garden where DH is going to have to chop the larger sections into smaller pieces so we can fit them in the car to take to the recycling centre.

On the money front I need to pay off the credit card today because I've just put everything on it recently - it's all budgeted for. I just need to draw the money from the various savings pots.  Our food budget is looking particularly healthy at the moment as we had a free Gousto box to redeem after buying our new fridge freezer, so we used the extra money budgeted for this week to make a trip to Costco and buy things to stock up in the freezer that will last us a couple of months.  

Going to be honest and admit I'm feeling very overwhelmed by all the things to do, the boxes to unpack, trying to work out where things are and where they need to go.  I'm trying to not put too much pressure on myself but I need to make some progress this week.  I know I just need to pick one room and try and work my way through it 😆

debtfreewannabe321

We've some similar built in dodgy wardrobes too. Look like they were done almost 50 years ago by the design and colours. They stretch across a whole wall -14ft and come out around 4ft in some places 🤨😩. And around a chimney breast too where they've used the biggest screws to attach the wardrobe too... they built them from scratch as they didn't bother repainting behind where the clothes hang....and there is where we've found original picture rails. I can't believe they ripped them all out throughout the house and replaced walls with awful wallpaper like wood chip ugh. I feel your pain on cleaning and unpacking whilst trying to tackle smaller projects. It is overwhelming. I was all unpacked until I just went to the storage locker and brought back a load more 🤣. However unpacked and having homes for everything is different. I've lots of unpacked stuff lying around waiting for a home 🤣

ruby_eskimo

You're making me feel a lot better about not being quite so organised 2 weeks in @debtfreewannabe321


2 days into September and 2 NSD's in the bag too 👍  Back on my "try not to buy everything you see" wagon.  Even stopped DH from buying yet more storage things last night because we have similar things in a box somewhere that will do the job.  I just need to find the box...

Last night I didn't get as much done as I wanted but I did prioritise going for a walk and doing some yoga to help ease my aching joints and muscles.  Woke up feeling a lot better this morning so it was definitely worth it in a way.  Tonight I want to finish unpacking clothes so I can then put away the clean washing that's piling up on the spare bed.  In my head that doesn't sound like a big job but I know it will be so I'm quite glad that dinner tonight is going to be leftover curry from the freezer.  I also want to finish unpacking my desk today so might try and do that between work calls but it all depends on how busy I am.

LadyWithAPlan

Congrats on your new home ! 

As you say it’s a balance between getting your list done and also not driving yourself mad