So, the week off work begins with…

• Engineer visit to find out what’s wrong with the bastard cooker
• A letter from my cretinous ex-accountant’s Official Receiver, basically stating I’ve got fuck-all chance of getting any money back.  (Which can be summarised thus : Assets : £5,000. Debts : £150,000. Chances : Fuck All)
• Herself grouting tiles
• Yours Truly painting/creosoting fence panels. There’s only 100 of ‘em to do…

Still, at least I’m not back in work for a while now.  Silver linings, clouds, and all that guff.

In the last week, we’ve had the following stuff at the house…

• Last Friday – water leak under the sink  (fixed that evening) – kitchen water completely off
• Weekend – doing all the floor tiles
• Monday – another (different) water leak under the sink – water turned completely off
• Tuesday – water leak fixed
• Wednesday – Power cut off, due to EDF doing work on power supply in village
• Wednesday – No gas going to brand new gas cooker. Nothing at all – both bottles are full, no kinks in the pipe, nothing blocked. Auto-shutoff on the cooker seems to be OK. But there’s no gas.
• Thursday – still no gas to cooker
• Friday – ditto

There’s an engineer visit booked for tomorrow to check the cooker.

So all told, over this week my sense of humour has utterly failed, which is never a good sign.

As a result, and with plenty of other outstanding jobs to do, we’ve taken the decision to move our break from next week to [some other time] (although we’re as yet undecided to when) and we’ll spend the week at home instead, sorting out some of the outstanding stuff, and taking time out that way instead.

Luckily the people at Scottish Country Cottages have been lovely, and allowed us to change the booking at very short notice – we explained the situation, and they’ve been very understanding.

In the current situation I can’t deny, I’m actually happier to not be going – I wasn’t massively looking forward to the drive, and I think we’d both be focussing on what was happening at home, plus what we could be doing at home instead of being up in Scotland. That happened two years ago, and was the final point for us coming home early from Devon.

So we’re at home instead of in Scotland. There’s still pre-written posts to come during the week, but I’ll be adding in random stuff too. Probably.

Excuse the braindump waffle, but I’m tired…

Anyway, the kitchen is now completely tiled. Herself has done a fantastic job with the tiling itsef, and I’ve done what I can with the tile-cutter (something I’m actually good at) and with mixing the tile adhesive.

We’ve still got the grouting to do, of course, but at least we’ve got the majority of the work done now. The only bits that remain are the verdammt grouting, and then having all the kitchen unit doors replaced (which will now happen after our week’s holiday) but when that’s all sorted, the kitchen should be done. And a happy day that’ll be.

During the week, Herself has finished off tiling the walls in the redone kitchen – and bloody good they look too.

It’s taken longer than expected (and there’s still all the grouting to do) mainly because I don’t think either of us had really understood the sheer scope of the project. There’s one hell of a lot of tiles, and some decidedly awkward bits – not least the window-sill, and the wall where the sink is.

But it all looks fantastic – and once it’s done, I’m almost certain there’ll be a couple of photos put up here. Don’t hold your breath though, it won’t be ’til April…

In the meantime, this weekend will be spent doing the floor tiles. Still a big job – the tiles are the same beasts we’ve used in just about all the other rooms, 45cm square 10mm thick vitrified ceramic things that need a proper industrial tile-cutter. Yep, hired from HSS again – I suspect that over the length of the house project, we’d have actually been better off if we’d bought one, but there we go. That’s hindsight for you.

Still, by Monday we should be done on tiling – with the exception of the bloody grout, of course.  Just don’t expect much in the way of updates while we’re doing it.

Over the years, many people have told me that it’s more sensible to have a mortgage than to keep on paying rent. Rent is, supposedly “dead money” – you’re not getting anything for it (except another month living in your property of choice) and you’re just helping to pay off the landlord’s bills.

Finally, two years ago, I jumped off the bridge, and got a mortgage with Herself on this place. Since then we’ve been doing a lot of work on the place (as any vaguely regular reader of D4D™ will know) and that side of things is all going OK. Of course, the fact is that on that score rental is easier – if something needs doing, you call the landlord or letting agency, and it gets done.

For me though, while I’ll continue on with the mortgage, I’m discovering that it has a far more negative effect on me than I’d be happy with on the real long-term.

I find that the knowledge of the amount of the mortgage keeps coming back to me, that it’s kind of a mill-stone. I don’t want to lose it, I don’t want to change it – but I’m constantly aware of it.

Maybe it’s that I’m a late-starter on the entire house-buying front, that if I’d been doing this since I was twenty-seven then I’d be used to the knowledge of the debt by now. (and I’d be nearly halfway through paying it off, which would help too!)  Maybe over time the awareness of the debt faades a bit. I don’t know – I’ve only been doing this for two years, after all.

I don’t want to have the mortgage for the full term of it – the plan has always been to overpay whereever possible, and by as much as possible within the terms of the mortgage, although over the first two years we haven’t been able to do that at all (mainly due to me being a slack-ass, and not doing the necessary extra work through the aforementioned lack of motivation) but the intention is still there for the next mortgage period.

And that’s the balance I need to find, too – between the awareness of this (to me) sodding huge millstone of debt and the desire to reduce it as much as possible.

After all, there’s no money more “dead” than the interest I’m/we’re paying to the fucking bank. Paying back 2½ times the amount borrowed? That’s “dead money” indeed.

Call me sensitive, portray me as a geek with no practical skills, whatever – but I really fucking hate DIY.

This weekend’s effort has been to put on the new doors for all the kitchen cupboards – supposedly an easy job, only for me it’s not. Not helped by the fact that we never seem to have the right tools for the job – this one involved needing to get a new drill bit, because for some reason all our 5mm drill bits have disappeared – which drives me completely crackers, and really gets to me.

The problem with the cupboard doors was that – of fucking course – the holes for the hinges aren’t in the same place as they are on the old doors. Which means either a) drilling new holes in the doors (risky) or b) drilling and sorting new holes in the units. We’ve opted for b), as a) is decidedly dodgy where my lack-of-talent is concerned.  Only even that is too complex for me, so it all becomes stressful and annoying.

I’m aware of my limitations on these things – I’m OK with some of the basics, but I’m better as being an assistant (at best) or – far preferable – paying someone else to do the stuff I can’t do.

To me, it’s better to have work done professionally – it saves on the stress, hassle, and crap all round.