I was right!!

Buses - that's what Lodgers are... As I predicted, I waited a week, then 2 came along together.

Anyway I now have my Master Bedroom rented out from the 1st June - to a Guy called Steve! (Must be OK with a name like that!) and with Shankar already in my third room, Suzi's room can wait until July / August, which will allow her to get a bit nearer to University departure dates... and for which a lovely Girl from Sheffield is already interested.

Spoke to ABNB today (the boat broker!) and everything seems to be plodding along. All being well K2 will become mine Mid May, and I'll move her during the half term (end of May). Oh yes - that is the view you will see coming the other way round the cut to me!!

Stop the midnight sleep!!

Telephone conversations to a minimum due to dogs eating the cable!! So the famous hole in the floor was filled and the frame first coat painted, and the garage sort out was started - another job (and a half) ticked....
And another person round the house tonight, I know what will happen - I'll end up with 3 people wanting the room, still all the jobs are flying by quickly, maybe I'll rent out the boat!
HAHA - it's OK, only joking!
Compare this picture with Sunday 20th!

Dear Sir, Ref: Marine Finance

Is it on - or off? come on, open that fold up.....

""Further to the above,"" (yes yes blah blah) ""we have pleasure to advise a facility has been secured with RoyScot Larch Ltd. (a member of the RBS group)""
Fantastic - anybody want my room from mid May / 1st June?
Weekend was busy - Whilst I, equally busy moving furniture, putting up blinds, selling a playroom full of toys, selling my Canadian from Ebay, and showing 2 people round my house / room.
I travelled 414 miles and 4 different vehicles later, including Andys Shogun and a Transit van - I'm ready to go back to work for a rest!!
But now the real work starts - I will feel happier when my room is rented out, but I need to clear the garage, as well as finish all those jobs previously listed....

Another day, another dollar.

Today sent the balance of the boat deposit to the Broker. That's a hole - but not as much of one when I write the cheque for the rest of my balance! 25% of the price... goody - can't wait!!

On the DIY side tonight painted the Kitchen. Ever since I moved in, and knocked that famous door through from the Kitchen to the Dining room - I've needed to paint over the plaster - so now it's done. Matt has agreed to do my floor, skirting and edging for me, so now I'm cracking on with carpet cleaning, and making good the house.

Is it worth it? Well - my brother found this on my pontoon today - WOW, that feels real, and the picture on the right could be my tug deck view..... I'm dead excited!!

Failed!

I have decided - DIY I hate! It was simple tonight, walk the dogs then cut a piece of Lino into my Ensuite, releasing an underlay for the little bit of flooring pictured previously.
The dog walk was great - the lino cutting went wrong, and the resultant mess in the music room and kitchen means I went backwards tonight, rather than forwards, and resulted in a desperate plee to Matt (mentioned below as well) "I've had enough - please sort it for me"
Reality is, I haven't even cleaned the house properly for weeks, let alone cut the grass, because of all that has been going on. I now need the rest of the jobs completed, so that I can get on and clean, repaint where needed, and get it looking like a house someone could live in.
So tonight I'm fed up, with a house that feels like that wretched Fourth Road Bridge, and the plans for this week in tatters!

£10bn? Don't need that much!!

Woke to the expected news that RBS was shifting strategy, and was launching a rights issue to raise more than £10bn! As my key lender - can I borrow 30 seconds of interest please?

My trip to B&Q became a run to Homebase, as Matt (one of my good mates) is having a pitch battle with B&Q, as their internet pricing is different to their in-shop pricing. As he runs his own business in the trade, the difference cost him the profit on one job alone!

Anyway - this is my newly seeded lawn, and the St Georges flag isn't a worry to my neighbours, rather a vain attempt to keep the pigeons off the seed.

The astute of you will notice that "seeding the lawn" wasn't one of my target jobs this week, however the forecast of warm wet weather made me think it was a good time to get the seed down. So get in your boats, as we are now in for some unseasonally hot and dry weather !!!

However, I did get the tiling finished in the bathroom, so thats one job off the list! - I used 6 of your tiles, so the other 14 will be winging their way back to you!!

Keep that work going!!

Weekend away, and now back with a growing list of work at my house. However brilliantly, I found a set of tiles that will finish off my bathroom perfectly. So tonight I shall chip off the old tile adhesive, and tomorrow is a trip to B&Q !! Increasingly I just want shot of this house.. but I have to be patient as the various funding bits of paper shuffle about!

Here's the offending floor between the music room and kitchen that needs tiling, and then the frame painting. Maybe I can get those three jobs done this week. Then I need to get the skirting on, and finish off the wood floor edging!

The good things though - I loaded my first set of ebay sales tonight, so hopefully some stuff will start selling; I updated my Flatmateclick.com site to see if I can generate interest for my bedroom and I got the receipt for my boat deposit today, so I guess at least that side of it sounds good!

Emotions are a roller coaster - !!

sqUEeze

Credit crunch! Got home to a letter from my marine mortgage broker saying - "Dear Sir, we require further information on

1. Renting out your home

2. The whereabouts and funding of the deposit.

So more work - and I hate that detail stuff... off to the Estate Agent, to get letters proving what the house will rent for, and contacting Isa's fund managers to get valuations to send through. But they will take a few days to receive, as they can only be sent through the post to my home. So mean while, - my account is lighter by the brokers deposit (as apposed to the financial deposit) but I still have to prove the total financial deposit.. hmmm confusing, and complicated as I moved the brokers deposit around accounts to get it to my cheque account!!

Come on Guys, I want to borrow 75% of the value of a boat that I have got for the best price on the cut, and I have way more value in my house than you are lending me. I think I'm an OK bet !! Well would have been if Gordon Brown and the banking fraternity hadn't been so greedy that they wrecked our economy, and still can't 'fes up, and put it right for us.

The Follow Up...

So that's what 2 tons of pebbles looks like when you have shovelled them from the front of the house and into the pathway at the back!! (Actually, I only shovelled about half a ton - the rest had been done by my Dad by the time I got home from work!!)

Money laundering today... shovelling cash from account to account to get the cheques off for deposit and marina deposit, phew that was hard - haven't written a cheque for months... haha!!

I wasn't alone in that arena though. Gordon Brown was desperately trying to work out how he got the economy so wrong, with all his banking croonies, and my Brother was up to tricks too!

Under Offer

Many a slip between finance and everything else... but the offer is made and accepted, so this unregistered Mel Davis 57 foot tug with a 1954 DM3 could become K2. Pontoon 17W1 at Brinklow Marina could become home!

Told you - interesting week...

Could I live here.....

Well, it might be my new home...!






Interesting week ahead.

Is there light??

Yes! there are enough 240v plug sockets for me to work from home! Yes, the pole and boathook are with the boat, but there is no plank... (That's no good, how can I make Shilah the dog walk it when she's done wrong?) Yes, there is wood and varnish available to make the alterations I want, No you can't negotiate on the price..
LOL - what do you expect, of course I can't !! But when you buy a second hand boat, you get some mooring and a license - I have neither, so best they get thinking how I can buy the boat without negotiating, but without having to pay all the additional up front costs. Marina £1900, Insurance £370, License £670, Survey £350 - plus £2000 of "revenue" money into the deal, rather than from savings or a mortgage... hmmm - Need a deal here to make this work Guys.
What's the picture? well it's lights in the tunnel - not even just a boat coming the other way !!

Back on Track!!

Well, came home early as the second rental agent was coming around at 1800hrs. To find this... OK it was a 5 foot plant yesterday, in fact it was one this morning. There was a kitchen floor as well, that had been cleaned and scrubbed ready for my agent to turn up, only I found that both lodger and dog had tramped mud and water through the room, and I had to start cleaning all over again!
I was grumpy, but it drowned that Gremlin, as all I wanted was a smaller more managable space that hasn't got someone else who doesn't appreciate how much time and effort it takes in keeping a house clean.
Anyway, new agent agrees with previous agent, and I can attempt to let the house with both.
So with that under my belt, I set to and took the floor out between the music room and the kitchen, ready to finish that area off, once the underlay and floor divider is purchased, and fired an email to the boat brokerage with a bunch of questions....

Gremlins

Well! today was the doubt gremlin day!! He popped up this morning and wouldn't go away despite attemps to liquidise him in the blender. All the "what if's" came tumbling in...
What if I don't rent the house?
What if I can't do the travelling to the office?
What if I don't have enough room on the boat?
What if the dogs hate it?
what if I hate it!?
What if interest rates double?
What if I don't see my daughters?
What if? What if? What if?
Trouble is - there's no-one who can make that gamble, errrr, decision except me!
Meanwhile tonight I have painted the bathroom, and tomorrow I have another Rental Agent round to talk to me !!

Work, work, work and Snow!

First the bit that every UK blog will be reporting today - we had snow. 4 inches at my end! That's not unusual, I was sailing on Windermere in the late 1970's when we had snow during Easter - Then Easter was, as we all remember, the third weekend of April!! here's the obligatory picture!!

More importantly, The rental agent spent his visit last week, pointing out all those jobs that I was going to complete, but got sidetracked into more interesting things!

So Mr Rental Agent - the railway sleepers are now laid in place for the gravel path around the conservatory, and the gravel will come in May!

Oh, and the Ensuite is now plastered and sports the Laura Ashley Parisian Blue and White, as the bedroom does!

Phew!! Add to that mix Saturday horse riding and ice skating, together with a little pressure of a daughters hair not colouring correctly for a party, and the weekend was a little busy. It's amazing what you can do when you put your mind to it! So I missed my brothers open day at Brinklow marina. Still I know the place pretty well!!

I've now got to finish the Bathroom, complete the floor in the conservatory and music room, and put the edging on the wood floor throughout the lounge and hallway - and maybe replace the carpet on the landing.... Ouch!

It may all be unrequired anyhow... Friday, one of my staff asked me if he had heard right - was I renting my house out? Giving him the affirmative he acknowledged that it would be ideal for him and his dogs once he has sold his house.

Ideal - rental without agents, to your staff!!

Money, money, money... must be funny!!

Well, it was for Gypsy Girl and Abba, all those years ago anyway! But it's not so funny in todays economic climate! Pulling cash out of my accounts to consolidate them for a deposit is an interesting game, and one that will take around 30 days to resolve ! that's the nuisance of high interest accounts ! It's a pain actually as I can't progress on a marine mortgage until I have evidence of the deposit... and so the circle continues. That said I have already made the relevant phone calls, and at some point over the next month the required £20K will be drifting into my running account.
So plan is...
Boat purchased and surveyed by the begining of June - move onto her end of June, rent out house from 1st July. There are some tidying things to be done on her before I can take possession - such as wiring in the headlight and various other jobs not completed at fit-out.. so there will be a pause between deposit and moving - and of course some internal and external jobs, like signwriting and so on....
Keep watching this space!!

Pay that Rent !

Well today the rent man cometh! and he say Yah! So, in theory I can rent the house out as a whole unit - pay the agent and the insurance and still cover the mortgage and some extra! So far so good! My financial advisor did call back today, driving between Devon and Cornwall on his annual business run, so he is now working on consolidating my various investments to get the deposit in line - some of those need a little time to pull down, and at this point I'm still in the twilight area. On the one hand I'm getting excited by the possibility that this could become reality, on the other knowing full well that anyone could buy the boat for cash tomorrow and I shall be blown away!

So bottom line is - Paying all the house and living bills as now, add to that the boat bills including heating, mooring and the ever increasing diesel and coal costs, renting the house out and living on the boat, I will end up with £669 per month to live on....

Hey - I can do this!!

Anyone want to rent my house? (snow not always guaranteed)