going to bed now. it took two hours to get the wi-fi up and running. this is much more time than it should have required. must give props to a really helpful scottish lass on tech support who was actually a) knowledgeable b) helpful and c) a pleasure to deal with. i told her all of this. kudos must be given when warranted.
Tag: house
So much has happened in the last two weeks, I don’t even know where to begin
So, a quick bullet point recap:
- we bought a house
- we painted it top to bottom
- we re-wired large chunks of it
- we installed a shower that still doesn’t work
- we moved
- In a stunning display of cleverness, I managed to lock the shed keys in the shed, requiring a visit from our friendly neighbourhood locksmith
- we re-painted the whole upstairs floor of our old house
- I went to Scotland for a business trip
- we are all completely exhausted and I think I gave myself a bad case of carpal in the process
Notable events during this time:
- the mouse, that damned mouse, stowed away and is now living somewhere behind our cupboards. Our cats are useless.
- said cats are driving us nuts by destroying the house and running rampant all night
- the boy is on solids and is discovering the joys of carrots and sweet potato
- I managed to go to Scotland and not eat a single deep-fried, battered food item
- the Scottish tried to kill me many times with food, but I have to give mad props to a Spanish tapas bar that catered with much success to my multiple allergies.
- we bought a new bed and a new mattress. This is a source of joy, and debt.
- we should have internet access at home shortly
More on all these when I can spare the time. In the meantime, know that I am still alive and tired as sin.
It might be a loooooong few days
BenBen’s sleeping patterns have been fractious these past few days. He seems to wake up coughing every night. It used to be only once a night, but these past few, it’s been two or three times. The good news is that he’s still able to settle himself back down to sleep, but it has started to take its toll. He’s not sleeping as well, so he’s not getting as much rest and he’s getting grumpy in the day. On a brighter side, he has regained his appetite back so we are happy about that. The bad news though is that his irregular nighttime sleeping patterns has started to affect his daytime naps. He used to go down for hour- or two-hour long naps during the day. These past few, he’s been restless and doesn’t go down as quickly or as deeply. He cries a lot, and we haven’t heard that in a while. It harkens back to the bad old days.
We had to go to the house this afternoon to wait for BT man. The situation was promising. BenBen had just been fed and it was time for his nap. He did not feel the same way. He cried, no make that hollered, the whole time we were there. Considering that we’re going to be there all weekend and most of next week painting, DIYing and cleaning, this fills me with anxious dread. I don’t like hearing him cry. He’s generally such a good baby that when he is being difficult or inconsolable, it seems that much more difficult.
They say that buying a house and having a baby are the two most stressful things you can do in your life. We’re doing both in a very short timespan. Hopefully things will settle down soon and we can start enjoying life and stop worrying about everything. The cynical voice in my head tells me that there’ll always be something to worry about. Still, we just want a little bit of us time. Of family time. Of time where we don’t have to worry about a dozen things at once.
Health-wise, the BenBen is fine. We go to the doctors enough to ensure that :) His chest is clear. His weight is stable. When he’s in a good mood, he’s bright eyed and bushy-tailed. I’m sure that we’re anxious about things that we don’t need to be worried about. It’s just easier said than done to not worry about all the work that needs doing in short order and having a crying baby thrown in for good measure does not help.
We can only hope it goes ok.
All this hard work is bad for my health
I spent a large part of the weekend doing manly-type things. I installed light fixtures, filled in holes in walls, sanded filler until I was covered in a fine white sheen of dust, ran cabling through our walls and floorboards and did various other electrical and carpentry related DIY. As a result, I hurt.
The upside of this though is that my house is becoming safe. The people who wired it in the past were… creative. We found out, much to our surprise, that our electric shower was being fed by the lighting circuit. This meant that every time the previous owner took a shower – in a bathroom where none of the fixtures are earthed – she put the wiring under twice its rated load. Nice. Or, in other words, scary as hell. It’s a Very Good Thing that Will is going through the shopping list brought to our attention by the electrical survey. He’s doing really good work as well, so if you need an electrician, he’s your man (or, as he’s fond of saying, Where there’s a Will, there’s a way!)
The good news is that there’s not as much work as he originally anticipated. The bad news is that some of it will be more involved than expected and some of it has already proven to be annoying. In order to install the breaker box, we had to move the panel holding the main house breaker and the electric meter. This involved building a wooden frame to lower everything to give us the room we needed for the panel. This, in turn, involved me building an extension to the cabinet housing all the electrics. Wiring an earth bond for the bathroom involved snaking a cable from upstairs to downstairs. This involved 3 hours of swearing and finally drilling a rather big hole in the wall. Still, all the work will be more than worth the effort. You can’t beat the price as well – cost of the parts and a nice fish pie. I’ll be more than happy to pay it if it means my family is not living in a death trap.
The BenBen, he is not feeling well
Just as his appetite was starting to get better, BenBen’s taken a turn for the worse. He’s been cough-y for a few days now. We’re not sure if it’s just a cold, seasonal allergies, teething or a fun mixture of a bit of everything at once, but he’s been running a fever, has a touch of the runs and is waking himself up at night coughing again. And, of course, he’s being a git to feed and is generally a grumpy boy. Yesterday, he skipped the equivalent of two full feeds. He woke himself up at 4am this morning but managed to get back to sleep around 5am. We know we’re blessed with a good sleeper, so that’s making things bearable. He’s having a nap as I’m writing this. He woke up a while ago in a coughing fit but is either back asleep or chilling in his cotbed. Either way, I’m leaving him alone.
In happier news, we should be getting the house keys today :)
Holy crap, I’m British!
I’ve just received a phone call from the lawyer handling my immigration case. I am now officially British†. I’ll shortly be getting my certificate of naturalization, with which I will be able to apply for a full British passport. YAWP!
This means, of course, that more money needs now leave my poor, depleted account. We’ve just this morning transferred close to £37,000 to our solicitor to cover the house deposit and all the various fees that are the last step before the contract exchange, and then the house is ours.
Egads!
† Conditionally on calling up the Cambridge registry office and setting up an appointment to take an oath to the Queen, of course :)
State of the Richard
Lots of things happened in the past week.
My folks came for a visit, which was excellent. They spent a week on this side of the pond, mostly cooing at the Benster. Katy and I managed to have some us-time and spent more money than we should have at Ikea, buying new furniture for the house, and going to see The Boat that Rocked at the cinema. I highly recommend the movie, it’s a blast.
BenBen’s cold took a turn for the worse near the end of the folks’ visit. He’s normally a very chilled out and happy baby. Not these days. He’s a cantankerous snot monster that refuses to eat anything. He went from eating around 35 oz in a day to anywhere between 15 and 20. He just does not want to eat. He’s usually a good sleeper in the night as well, but the last few days have been trying. On Sunday, when he hadn’t had anything significant to eat for his last two feeds of the day, he had a complete meltdown from 4pm and we had to just put him to bed at 6pm. He was exhausted and just didn’t want to do anything but scream and go to sleep. We thought that he’s be wailing down the walls in the middle of the night – because he’d hardly eaten anything – but it turns out that he had a decent night. He woke up around 3 am in a coughing fit, but managed to put himself back to sleep with a minimum amount of fuss. I, on the other hand, hardly slept that night. I was so worried that he’d be waking up that I was dreading it and ended up sleeping at most 5 hours that night, in fits and bursts of 30 minutes here and there.
We took him to the docs yesterday because he was seriously off his feeds and was running at a higher temperature than normal for him. They prescribed us some antibiotics and we went home. He was still fractious but had a better day than Sunday. He ate more, which is a good thing. We put him to bed at closer to his normal bedtime and things seemed to be going well, except that the coughing fit he had at 2:30 am kept him – and us – awake until 4am. He wasn’t crying, but was very vocal in his attempts to go back to sleep. In the end, we put an extra blanket on him, put his bedtime CD back on and Badger Badger’d him again and he drifted off to sleep. We managed to get a few more hours of kip, but I’m rather tired this morning. Katy and I have also caught whatever bug is plaguing him. I’ve been horking up yellow phlegm and Katy has a cough that would make a lifetime shag tobacco smoker envious.
Things might be progressing on the housing front. We had a phone call out of the blue from the estate agent on Saturday and, after a bit of phone tag, it would seem that the seller is “disappointed at having to reduce the house price but is going to be pragmatic about it”. Apparently, she’s had her own electrician do as estimate of the work that would need doing and the quote she got was about 1/3 of ours. We met somewhere in the “middle”. We’re still eating more of the costs than I’d ideally like, but I’m tired of waiting and I won’t quibble for a few hundred quid – even if we are morally in the right. Anyway, she wants to exchange this week, so we’re going to chase up the solicitors and see what we can do. Watch this space.
All things japanese
I recently went to see an exhibit of ukiyo-e woodblock prints at the V&A Museum in London. It reinforces to me the fact that I love Japanese design and art. We’re going to try and incorporate touches of it when we decorate the house. I’ve seen some lovely noren on Ebay that I have my eye on for the patio doors.
Decisions, decisions…
What to do, what do do indeed.
I’ve just gotten a phone call from our mortgage broker. It would seem that the RBS is willing to give us a mortgage. Thiis is good news. The bad news though is that the interest rate on said mortgage is 7.25% which, considering that the base rate of the bank of England is currently 1.0%, is nothing less than highway robbery.
Thing is though, the banks have us by the short and curlies. A lot of lenders are shying away from 90% mortgages.. Many are asking for at least a 15% deposit now. For us, this would mean finding another 8000 pounds out of thin air. Very few lenders will even consider me because I’m an evil foreigner. Combining these two facts means that the RBS can pretty much dictate any terms they want – they have their bonuses to earn, don’t they? If we want the house – which we do – we are facing a big decision. I knew that we’d get a bum deal for our first mortgage. I didn’t expect it to be this bad though.
We can afford the repayments. It’s the principle of the thing. But what is the price of a principle? In our case, it’s an extra 100 pounds a month for 5 years and a rough mental calculation puts this at an extra 6000 pounds in interest that we throw out the window.
So, decisions. And the realization that banks are teh evil and teh maj0r suckz.
We are not amused
The muppets at Cheltenham & Gloucester have refused our mortgage, on the basis that I do not have permanent leave to remain in the UK. This comes after leaving us hanging for two weeks while there was an inch of show on the ground and people were too pussy to go to work. This is, even, after they said that they would offer us a mortgage. They knew about my vsa status from the get go. Our mortgage broker had told them from the start and they said that it wouldn’t be an issue.
Until it became one.
After we’d put an offer on a house that we loved.
This is bureaucracy at its best. Red-tape, cover-your-ass mentality.
I’m gutted and furious and distraught and emotionally drained. I didn’t sleep at all last night.
We were told it wouldn’t be a problem, so we got emotionally attached to the house. We were measuring curtans and picking out colour schemes. Now, we’ll need to cancel our offer if our broker can’t find us another lender by the end of the week. Its not fair to the lady who’s selling the house to leave her hanging for longer than that.
Fuck you C&G, I hope you go bankrupt.