Renovations and Repayments.
Comments
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Good to hear you are content about the standalone shower - we have loved ours and will definitely always have one, wherever we can fit one.
Enjoy your trip to RW next week. I have just been catching up on the Osprey web-cams I follow and sadly, the nest at Loch Garten is empty, after intruder Ospreys attacked the nest, driving away the male (Odin) on 18th and yesterday, the female (EJ). Mercifully, the nest at Manton Bay looks to be in better shape this morning with at two little heads of the healthy chicks dodging about first thing.Save £12k in 2024 - #2 target is £5000 only £798.34 so far
OS Grocery Challenge 2024 25.04% spent or £754.10/£3,000 annual
I also Reverse Meal Plan on that thread and grow much of our own premium price fruit and veg, joining in on the Grow your own thread
My Debt Free Diary Get a grip Woman0 -
Alex, did you not buy the house as a doer-upper? In which case you're very much entitled to spend money making it a comfortable and pleasant place to be! (You might even eventually decide you want to call it 'home'!!)Mortgage free 16/06/2023! £132,500 cleared in 11 years, 3 months and 7 days
'Now is no time to think of what you do not have. Think of what you can do with what there is.' Ernest Hemingway0 -
Another vote for standalone showers, downtime together over half term, and time spent on or by lakes
sounds really good, Alex. 2023: the year I get to buy a car0 -
I hope I remember this post when I'm not feeling so good.
You do that! And should you not, I'll remind you!!:DReally looking forward to this half term. ONE MORE DAY!
And it's Friday!!:D Great that MrsK is off work too too. So 9 family days together for 4 days leave. All good.
:T How positive is that!! It sounds great. Did you mix and match the bathroom fittings or are they all from one range/supplier? Can you show us any links? What sort of tiling/flooring/heating did you go for? I told you I was nosey.:o:D More seriously, we need to revamp our own bathroom so I'm looking for ideas. My home is Edwardian but not typical. It's a Georgian copy cottage part of the Garden City movement in a conservation area so posh hotel style bathroom really wouldn't suit.Not said much about the bathroom because I'm a little loathed to admit it's now gone over budget by £1,500 and we are back in debt for it.
However, it looks brilliant and the standalone shower doesn't look anywhere near as silly as I thought it would. Whilst not the prettiest feature of the room, it doesn't look as out of place as I had thought and will be used everyday so I'm going to admit it was worth it. Really pleased we picked the high level cistern which Mrs. K. was really unsure about but now thinks is a statement piece of the bathroom. I was unsure about having a basin without a cabinet but the ones I really liked were a long way from being in budget. Anyway, I'm now pleased with our non-fussy pedestal basin, so it seems to have worked out really well. Can quite honestly say what has been the worst room of this house is now the best. On the less than positive side it does mean we are planning more spending on the house.
It's a bit like this one:
You're not doing so badly on the grocery budget although the week coming up will probably be expensive. Depending on what you include (eating out? wine?) then £400 per month is good for 3 people including lunches (not sure if MrsK is still taking lunch to work?). If it's just for food at home then I think you could cut back a bit during term time to free up some 'entertainment' budget for holiday time.
Hope the sun's still shining on you.:)0 -
May Targets:
Days getting longer and summer only around the corner, May is the month to sell a no longer wanted classic, I think.
Organise trip to Rutland Water with in-laws. Going to call this done.
Organise Whitsun holiday. 1. Trip to R.W. 2. Trip to the coast. 3. Son baking with parents. 4. At least one quiet day dog walking etc. 5. Swimming (thanks, Red Squirrel ).
Going to call this done, also.
Start work on the bathroom and it looks like we are going to finish this month too...
Total Grocery Spend: £285 / £400.
Surplus Money: £1,230 / £1,000. Going straight to the bathroom project.
11.30pm bedtime: 12 / 31.
Meditation: 13 / 31.
Schedule / Spreadsheets: 18 / 31. I'm behind with this again. I need to have a couple of hours on this tomorrow and have planned to do so tomorrow evening. This was meant to be today but didn't happen...
my excuse being the weather was too nice not to enjoy.
De-clutter and Sell: 1 / 5 items.
New Recipes: 1 / 4.
Books read for pleasure: / 3. Hardly read at all but June is a new month ...
Learn something new or refine a skill: 1. Continue learning and applying new knowledge to create more sophisticated and streamlined spreadsheets. Think this will need to carry over to next month.2. Learn a new piece of repertoire. Getting there with this. 3. Demolishing a bathroom and rebuilding it.
Had a good day apart from a somewhat cruel older boy at my son's school telling my son that his father told him our house is "haunted" because "an old witch" used to live there before it was empty for a long time and we moved there because we're "too poor" to live anywhere else. Apparently, we're "poor" because we don't have an xbox and his father has said our cars must have "dodged a scrapyard" many times over. The boy then told my son he will "probably die" because we're so "poor". :mad: I was quite honest with my son about the history of the house (it was empty for years before we moved here) but reassured him there's nothing to be scared of and there are people in this world a lot worse-off than us. I'd have found it laughable if it hadn't all really upset my son. Anyhow, it now appears a lack of an xbox and a classic car collection = likely to starve. Get playing computer games and make sure to get yourself a white Audi A3 because you don't want to wind up like me in my "haunted" house, driving a "scrap dodger" and without necessary modern "entertainment".
Suffolk_lass wrote: »Good to hear you are content about the standalone shower - we have loved ours and will definitely always have one, wherever we can fit one.
Enjoy your trip to RW next week. I have just been catching up on the Osprey web-cams I follow and sadly, the nest at Loch Garten is empty, after intruder Ospreys attacked the nest, driving away the male (Odin) on 18th and yesterday, the female (EJ). Mercifully, the nest at Manton Bay looks to be in better shape this morning with at two little heads of the healthy chicks dodging about first thing.
I hadn't once questioned the functionality of it but just how it would work in our setting. Shouldn't have been so concerned, really. :rotfl:
Looking forward to RW. My son and I have been following the ospreys, we read the blog every night before bedtime. Alex, did you not buy the house as a doer-upper? In which case you're very much entitled to spend money making it a comfortable and pleasant place to be! (You might even eventually decide you want to call it 'home'!!)
The house was bought as a wreck. We thought we'd have it completed in 2 years and would have done had life not got in the way. Been here a decade now and only starting to finish the expensive but not 100% necessary jobs. However, I suspect most would think the jobs I'm talking about are necessary.
I want to finish it now. After seeing the transformation of the bathroom (not much we've done has been visual apart from when we first moved in), I think we could make this house into something quite nice.Another vote for standalone showers, downtime together over half term, and time spent on or by lakes sounds really good, Alex.
Thanks, Karmacat.
Just realised I didn't respond to your PM, I'm sorry. I didn't mark as unread then forgot to respond. I'll respond tomorrow / Sunday depending what we decide to do with the weekend. 2018 totals:
Savings £11,200
Mortgage Overpayments £5,5000 -
You do that! And should you not, I'll remind you!!:D
Please do so.And it's Friday!!:D Great that MrsK is off work too too. So 9 family days together for 4 days leave. All good.
Yes, my wife is getting quite good at pairing leave with bank / school holidays.:T How positive is that!! It sounds great. Did you mix and match the bathroom fittings or are they all from one range/supplier? Can you show us any links? What sort of tiling/flooring/heating did you go for? I told you I was nosey.:o:D More seriously, we need to revamp our own bathroom so I'm looking for ideas. My home is Edwardian but not typical. It's a Georgian copy cottage part of the Garden City movement in a conservation area so posh hotel style bathroom really wouldn't suit.
It's a bit like this one:
You're not doing so badly on the grocery budget although the week coming up will probably be expensive. Depending on what you include (eating out? wine?) then £400 per month is good for 3 people including lunches (not sure if MrsK is still taking lunch to work?). If it's just for food at home then I think you could cut back a bit during term time to free up some 'entertainment' budget for holiday time.
Hope the sun's still shining on you.:)
Bathroom fittings are mixed and matched. I'll post an update with links etc. over the weekend as I ought go to bed now!
Your house sounds wonderful, maman. IIRC we are one of the few still with single glazed windows? Is it Georgian in style inside too or does it have Edwardian features?
Grocery budget is literally just food bought as raw ingredients to cook, counting lunches. My wife takes lunch to work everyday now and is being sensible about it. The budget does not count any eating out or wine. I don't drink much anymore, I think we've shared a couple of bottles this month. We are trying a batch cook challenge for June, so either a cottage pie, lasagne or something based from a tomato and red pepper sauce will form two meals per week. Two meals per week will be salad based, so something like tuna steak and salad or we'll make a quiche and have a slice of that with salad. So, next month should be cheap, I think.
Weather has been glorious and if you mean metaphorically speaking, yes it has. Great day at school, nice drive out and walk this evening.2018 totals:
Savings £11,200
Mortgage Overpayments £5,5000 -
Morning, if you're thinking of batch cooking in June, may I suggest borrowing Economy Gastronomy from the library. Written by Paul Merrett and Alegra (sorry her last name has escaped me)
I've used it often particularly when I did loads of match cooking. Helps prevent boredom imo.
Lovely to read your diary and see the progress you're making on multiple fronts.
Best wishes Tilly2004 £387k 29 years - MF March 2033:eek:
2011 £309k 10 years - MF March 2021.
Achieved Goal: 28/08/15 :j0 -
It really does amaze me what some people categorise as wealth (an Xbox?).
Well done on getting the bathroom up and running so quickly, I always find any house improvements take longer than I think they will.
Have a lovely, well deserved, half term break.0 -
My children are poverty stricken because they have never been in a Macdonalds!!!
What is a standalone shower?0 -
smallholdingsister wrote: »My children are poverty stricken because they have never been in a Macdonalds!!!
What is a standalone shower?
Separate from the perhaps more common over bath shower? Floor standing shower tray in its own cubicle? That's my understanding. 0
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