22 Foxhole East

Evening All!

B&C Insurance all sorted. Went for the whistles and bells policy as it was £100 more expensive, but much much more cover and as we are doing big work this year, it might just pay for itself.

I was just putting a bakewell into the oven, when I heard the unmistakeable sound of feet hitting wheelie bin next door at the cannabis house. !!!!!!, I thought, then watched two men breaking in. Called the rozzers, who were totally useless, the Keystone Cops would have been more use. Anyway, the robbers were in the house for less than 5 minutes, came out clutching a black package and legged it. I assume it was the two 'gardeners' who had hidden a stash of something in the house, and came to retrieve it. Hopefully it is the last we will see of them, they came for what they wanted and left. Still no sign of the house owner though. He is in for a shock!

Little old lady in Northern Ireland is having problems with her carers, they keep cancelling her calls because she is a 25 minute drive from the main town, oops, sorry it is a city now, and the office does not seem to be very good at grouping calls which are near each other, or giving them to the carers who live nearby. Mind you, she is a total harridan. I will give it a week before expecting the phone call to say how ill she has been (she is making it up) and how weak she feels and how much good it will do her to be able to get up when she likes, and have long baths (she gets 15 minutes once a week) . It is all manipulation, and must be ignored or she only plays up even more. She takes to her bed at least once every visit with an imaginary illness where she couldn't possibly eat anything, but suddenly develops a healthy appetite when you suggest she stays in bed and only has liquids. Just call me Florence...

This month has been very hard, I paid the mortgage first, and felt like I have been playing catchup the whole month. It is Wednesday and I have £10 left until Friday payday. I have a house full of food, so no worries there, but I am hoping the petrol holds until Friday morning after dropping the kids at school. So keep your fingers crossed for me.

I got referred by the GP to a gym!! I thought they would just send me to Fatclub (weightwatchers) but they don't do that here. So in April I will go and be assessed and see how much I can lose in my 3 months unlimited gym and pool use for £60.
So I had best get on with as many small jobs on the list before going away for Easter in anticipation of spending the mornings in the gym when the kids go back to school.

Booked the kids in for their dentists check ups (they are booking into June already!!)

Anyway, I am knackered after a very eventful night of midnight drain cleaning machines, a very tuneful drunk walking home, a 3am bathroom clean up after a child was too tired to aim, and after the burglars, every tiny noise woke me up, ready to fight.

Looking forward to April and all its challenges.

Da-da-daaaaaaa! The amount on the monthly totalizer is

£112,250.00

So.... two skirting boards are drying after coat #3 of white paint, they are in the kitchen at the minute, so I might get them back up to the top floor and attached to the wall today. That'll be fun !! Also been painting any door surround that is still dark brown. Soon they will all be gleaming white. But they all have to be dry before the kids get home from school or it gets messy, it seriously cuts down on my productivity, but cannot be helped.

Next job, more shelves, can you tell I am on a mission to get rid of my list?

I found a blind in a charity shop the right size for the small loo upstairs (£5), ordered DS2 another blind after DS4 broke it by not knowing how blinds work (he was suitably upset about having done it so no further action taken). I have put a large mirror in the upstairs loo, which is bouncing light into a very shady room. Added bonus is that the light is coming through the glazed panel of the door, and is making the top of the landing brighter.

I am starting to feel that soon, I am going to be able to see an improvement. I know as soon as I get everywhere wallpapered, and new carpet down the hall, stairs, and landing, the whole place will look a million times better in a matter of a few days.

Over the Easter break, after the Ireland road trip, I plan to decorate my bedroom (the last bedroom to be done) and take down the shower cubicle that is unusable in the bathroom.

I have decided that lino ~ or cushion flooring or whatever is the current lingo is for flooring on a roll, is going to be the best, fastest, and cheapest option, in the bathroom. Then I will get quotes for a new shower and tiling, and hopefully not get another load of £6k quotes.

The big things that still need doing are......
1 - Double or Triple glazing to the front of the house - for some reason the back has been done recently but the front is 1980s glazing and is draughty and you can hear every footstep on the pavement. It needs to be replaced.
2 - Bathroom revamp and shower cubicle that can be used.
3 - Carpet throughout from the top of the house to the bottom step of the stairs.
4 - Roof - not currently a problem but on borrowed time, but will necessitate plastering on the ceilings (which might ruin the carpet!)

I am ignoring anything on the ground floor. Ground floor is for 2018, or when all the above is finished.

There, a plan of action, now to find out how much each is going to cost, and figure out how to pay for it all.

It is so hard to work out how much money you have when 'people' (mortgage company) change your amounts without telling you. They have dropped the monthly payment by £5 because of my overpayments.
If we want to put it back up, it will class as an overpayment. Might use it as a way of upping the DH payment to £500 (from £478, well, now £473), it looks tidier.
I have introduced the idea of Tilly Tidying to DH )didn't use the name. He loves the idea! Saving without saving. Good old Tilly. Must get over to the O/S pages again soon. I have been neglecting them now we have a bit more money.
Get right back to basics.

I am picking up some Nomorenails for skirting boards and a Streetlifed light fitting for £5 on the way back from the school run. 3 beds to be changed and laundered, and the house cleaned in readiness for leaving on Sunday, and the car hoovered and cleaned in preparation for the long drive to Ireland. That'll be fun. The kids are already getting excited about night boats and cabins.
Oh well, they will remember it when they are older, and the rellies are all around the 70 yr old mark, so they won't last forever. Must remember to pack my nice screwdriver with me. Old lady has a list of jobs for me to do and a load for the tip and a load for the charity shop ready for me, and has arranged a dentist and optician appointment while we are there (4 days) so I will be kept busy. Hope for sunshine and be glad of a nice park and a pool with waterslides for the kids.


So, I think that the daily interest is now £5.96.

Great ideas on the bathroom Greenbee, which website do you use for pricing things? I wish you could just do a Rumplestiltskin style scenario with bathroom fitters, you lock them in a room overnight with all the things they need to do the job, and when you get up in the morning, you have a room full of spun gold..... or you chop off their head.
Sounds a bit drastic now I have typed it though.... might need a rethink.

The stupid mortgage people made us take out a 26 1/2 year mortgage based on affordability (totally ridiculous). I have asked them to take £500 a month as the repayment and I will add to the overpayments whenever there is anything left - and it is a sneaky way to get OH to join in with the overpaying. An extra £25 a month is not major, but it is 4 days interest I don't have to find.

We can overpay up to 10% of the total borrowed in a year, and there is no way I am going to be able to overpay nearly 12k a year. As I am looking to jump ship in 10 months when the fixed rate ends, and we are only looking at staying in the area for another 3 or 4 years, dropping the term doesn't really make any sense to us. We won't be here anyway, it is just a tart it up while living here and sell it on when a job appears somewhere else that tickles DH's fancy..

Annoyances for the day. Went off and got the gluey stuff, took the two x 13 feet long skirting boards up two flights of stairs and five sets of 90 degree bends, was just about to sticky them up when I thought, oh.. I will just check they still fit (like they were going to have shrunk or something, and guess what!!
The skirting boards sit about 1cm higher than the plug sockets.

Arrrrggghhhhh!!

Even when taking the carpet into consideration, there is no way the plug sockets were put in an inch above the skirting boards. Have I mentioned AAAARRRRGGGGHHHHH!! ?

So, I am going to have to take a cm off the bottom of the sodding skirting board so it fits under the sodding plug sodding socket. Why is it never easy???? Why did the electrician not do what I asked in the first place???
Why... why..... why..... Delilah!

Ok, the locking tradesmen in a room overnight (and lopping off bits if they have not done what you asked for by morning) no longer sounds too harsh. Does still sound like a Fairy Tale though.

Off to put up some more shelves. At least I can do that.