Blog Off

It's Christmas tomorrow and quite rightly the builders are not doing any more work until the New Year and I have already finished for the holidays.

As a result this blog will be on holiday now (for new posts anyway) until 2^nd January. You can comment as much as you like. This is as much to prove to Mrs APD that I can go more than a day without posting anything!

If you are reading this shortly after it is published then I am probably in the pub / having a curry and taking full advantage of blogger's ability to delay publication to a time of my choosing.

Happy Christmas

Decorem

Watts = Volts x Amps

I went round to the house today to take some more pictures; all the plastering in the upstairs bedrooms is finished as you can see from these pictures. The problem is, in this weather, it is taking a long time to dry out especially as there is no heating in the house at the moment.

In effort to speed the natural process up a bit the builder invested in a couple of cheap convection heaters. A first class idea except they were being run off an extension cable rated to a maximum of 10 amps.

The heaters (according to the box) are rated at 2Kw each. If I remember from my school days Watts = Volts x Amps so 4000 watts of heat from a 240 volts supply requires 16.6amps. That will probably account for why the heaters kept switching off!

Just as well we have RCD circuits everywhere.

A Slight Diversion

Sarah has posted an end of year update on her blog.

I am not sure I agree with her that house price falls are largely down to money supply – I am sure greed was a significant factor in sellers expectations of what their properties were worth as well.

I remain convinced that there is money to be made out of property development provided you can buy cheap enough in the first place. Let's face it, if you could buy a three bed house for a £1.00 and you would make money provided all the other houses in the road were valued at £5.00!

Is Sarah right to wait with her property rented out until there is a recovery? Perhaps, but don't forget that it always takes longer for a price to recover than it takes to fall. £100.00 to £80 is a 20% decrease but £80.00 to £100.00 is 25% increase!

Personally I will sell out if I can make a reasonable profit and then look to do another one straight away. Whilst I won't view a profitable rent as a failure, it isn't what I set out to do so is very much the second best option. There is a limit to the amount of debt I feel comfortable with (always assuming you can raise the money of course).

Kitchen Delivery

I have to say I am impressed with Homebase.

Just two days after ordering the kitchen they are on the telephone to find out when we would like it delivered. It could have been as soon as the 8th January but with Christmas between now and then I don't think we will be quite ready. You don't want a kitchen hanging about in the house getting damaged so I think it is better to delay delivery until we are ready to start fitting. The 13^th January it is.

The insane optimist in me say that if we can get it done in 3 days we will hit the project deadline. That isn't going to happen so I think this revised date of the end of January is ever more likely.

I shall go round on Monday to take some more pictures.

Project Update

I am told that the upstairs will be finished by tomorrow evening ready for decorating, skirting boards, door fixing and bathroom installation etc much of which will start on Monday.

I am still hopeful that we will come in slightly under budget although I think the deadline of the middle of January may be a challenge.

Disappointingly will will need a least one more skip (that will be the 6th). I hadn't anticipated spending around a thousand pounds on skips - and this is not a huge job in comparison to some. If I ever do another project like this I will work out how many skips I need and double it!!

Kitchen Design (Again)

The kitchen has been bought and paid for but we will have to wait four weeks (maybe longer) for delivery. Here is the final version. The floor tiles and wall colours are just here for effect and probably won't be what we will actually use.

We ended up spending a little more than I had wanted as all of this cost just over £1200 including the sink and taps but excluding any appliances. The worktop looks like granite and I have bought the splash back to go with it as that adds a nice finishing touch.

In order to deliver a kitchen within the initial budget (£1500) we will need to buy an oven (we already have a hob) and a dishwasher for less than £300.00. That might be a challenge. I think it will be nearer £600.00 as the oven will need a grill as well. We could elect to go for a free standing dishwasher which will reduce the costs.

I don't intend to buy the appliances yet. It is possible that we will have enough room for a full size dishwasher rather than a slimline one but it depends on how thick the plaster is!

Kitchen Design

Here is my first attempt at a kitchen design now I know how big the kitchen will be. The cupboards on the right hand wall are wall cupboards placed on the floor but I couldn't persuade the design software that I didn't want them on the wall. The 3D picture looks a bit strange as a result but I am sure you get the idea

The final choice of finish and flooring will not be as shown but it looks nicer if your pick something.

I think the cost of this will be something like £600 plus the appliances which means we are just about in budget. I hope to place the order for this lot next week when I have finalised everything.