Cheery's country living adventure

EssexHebridean · 18 October 2021 at 11:45AM

Loving all the colour stuff here - my favourite room in the house for colours is the bathroom which has white tiles round most of it but a single wall in a soft grey the exact same colour as the roller-blind - which really works! We've also added to that with a grey bin, loo brush holder and toothmug. The "colour" in there comes from iridescent mosiac tiles which are in a vertical line down in the middle of the bath, the splashback behind the sink, and the bottom of the shelf recess above the bath, plus towels/mat - which are either a bright jade green or a rather lovely dark purple depending on which ones are in the wash! I love the idea of bright colours on walls etc, but rarely seem to be able to find a colour that I feel works terribly well!

Cheery you're really making some progress with the kitchen savings - well done, and how lovely to have a little something to add in from MrC's Dad too!

Cheery_Daff · 19 October 2021 at 10:15AM

Love iridescent tiles, and I love the idea of changing the colours of bathmats and towels!

Had an email from the bank this morning about my card being hacked. They've cancelled the transaction with the hotel the hacker booked, and the hotel have sent them details of the person who booked it - not me, but they wanted me to confirm I hadn't booked it for them.

They included a pic of the woman with her driving licence, which presumably she had to send as ID to them. So unless that's fake too I now know name, date of birth and where she lives. Feels wrong knowing all that - although I'm tempted to send her a little something in the post 😂 (I won't, I know it's likely she, or whoever booked the hotel, will have had to have my address to add as a billing address so I'm not that daft, but it's tempting!)

EssexHebridean · 19 October 2021 at 11:38AM

Hopefully that means the bank will be looking to take action against her now they have all the details - although of course the ID could well be fake as well!

The iridescent tiles are glorious - unquestionably my favourite bit of the bathroom, and it never fails to amaze me how just changing towels/mats can totally change the entire look of the room.

beanielou · 19 October 2021 at 6:15PM

Blimey, that is scary.

Cheery_Daff · 19 October 2021 at 11:02PM

Certainly is Beanie! Although I am grateful that the main inconvenience for me was that the bank didn't send my new card right away, so I to chase it later, then my pin number letter got wet in the post so I had to order a new one, so I was without a card for the main joint account for about 3 or 4 weeks.

But I shudder to think of how scared I would have been if this had been a few years ago and I'd faced the prospect of potentially losing £1600 😮 My stomach didn't even flip when I found out - not that I'd want to lose that of course, but it would have meant a drop in the savings account, rather than not being able to pay the bills. So thankful to not be in that situation any more.

Not much to report I don't think. Worked at home today, little cafe trip. Plasterer was meant to be here (and yesterday) but apparently the other job overran so it'll be tomorrow. I'll believe it when I see it. Been away a fortnight now and it's getting a bit tiresome - apparently there's only 3 days of plastering left to do now, and it could have been drying out all this time.

Speaking of drying out... the plaster seems to be wetter than it was with all this rain and gloomy weather we're having. Is that even possible?? We've had the windows open all day as we were told, but daren't put the heating on, as I know several radiators aren't connected, and a couple of the temporary connections in the loft are leaking, so I don't want to overload the system.

But I need to check with the builder because the whole house is getting damp 🙄 Ot's a pretty damp house anyway... especially the old part, but with no door on the cellar (which has a well in it, so isn't exactly dry) and no central heating, everything feels a bit soggy. I've got washing in the machine that I daren't hang up because it'll just make the damp worse - I'm going to have to wash it again when it looks like there's a chance to hang it outside.

So I'm going to email the builder tomorrow and see if we can switch the heating on, and suggest he sends the plumber to reconnect the existing radiators ASAP, and preferably at least connects the upstairs new ones.

Feel like we're starting to drop off the priority list a bit now... builder and electrician were here for part of a day last week to do upstairs lights and skirting, but only did half the lights (which we still can't switch on) and none of the skirting, although the boards are at least up there.

Feeling a bit in limbo...

Still, Mr Cheery has fitted a couple of floor tiles where there were gaps, and has managed to disconnect the Internet cable and drill it through the wall into my study which is great - it was just draped through the actual door before and stuck to the wall with electrical tape 😂 and we've figured out a solution for the bit of floor that was under the old sink and wasn't tiled - not going to match the rest of the floor but it'll look good enough. And I stuck up another 3 pieces of plasterboard over the last couple of days so progress is being made - by us at least! 😂😂

Cheery_Daff · 19 October 2021 at 11:05PM

Should point out we do have 3 electric heaters. Gpt one in the temp study/kitchen with me, one in living room with Mr Cheery (moved into kitchen when he's working in there) and one now upstairs in the new bedroom. But it's not much given the size if the house and the extent of the general sogginess!

Karmacat · 20 October 2021 at 7:52AM

Oof, the sogginess sounds quite unpleasant, Cheery - as does dropping off the list. You're both very good to keep plugging at the jobs that *you* can do. Hope the builder connects up the radiators today.

Cheery_Daff · 20 October 2021 at 7:53AM

Morning chums. Emailed the builder last night, and he's replied saying should be fine to stick the heating on - going to do it in the day time while the plasterer (who is also a builder) is here, just in case!

Should help dry us out a bit.

He said they'll be coming to do skirting/upstairs lights either later this week or early next week...

We've got people coming to stay on Saturday - I was hoping upstairs would have skirting done by then and they could sleep in there... Empty but camping on the floor. But it looks like we'll have to just shift everything to the side and hoover round it 🙄 Not ideal, but I'm not delaying guests - they've not visited the whole time we've been here so it's a small miracle rhey're coming at all, so I'm not going to put them off!

EssexHebridean · 20 October 2021 at 10:43AM

Ugh to everything feeling damp - that's not good. Hopefully getting the heating on for a bit will help make everything feel a bit better. Also crossing fingers that the plasterer turns up again today. Might it be time to deliver a gently worded ultimatum around timescales and setting a definite date when things have to be complete by, do you think? We had to do that with ours in the end and it did make a difference - sometimes I think while they think they can get away with stretching things out and fitting other jobs in they just do, but you're paying for the work the same as anyone else and do have a right to a reasonable level of attention!

Having folk to stay will be good though - hopefully that skirting will be sorted so you have less moving about of stuff to do!

Elisheba · 20 October 2021 at 11:29AM

I love the fact you have a well in your cellar, @Cheery_Daff That'll be useful come the zombie apocalypse

Seriously though, people in the past must have been delighted that they didn't have to trek outside come the winter and the snow. Not quite as useful now, I'll grant you, but even so, its still cool!

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Cheery's country living adventure

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