Our boiler is making me to go to the GYM

Funny I know but so very true.
We have inherited our boiler from previous owners. They had this Homecare from British Gas. Every year service guy came and did check on it and have written a "service form". When I was checking our boiler I saw the current form. Yes, boiler is 12 years old, working and it did had some small repairs over the time.
Then I have looked properly on previous form. Yes again everything same, boiler 12 years old. Hmmm. Same age year earlier? Something fishy. So I looked on the form from 3 years ago and same, boiler 12 years old. No good! The lazy British Gas man was copying the forms without changing the age of our boiler! It went back 7 years!

So we bought the house with 12 years old boiler and week later it was almost 20 years old boiler! Not happy!
It is showing it's age. Our heating is working fine (just a little bit slow) but real fun is when trying to get a hot water.
You will switch on shower and it goes slowly hot. So you jump in the shower and then after 10 seconds water goes suddenly stone cold! So you are standing on the side of the bath shivering cold and waiting for second round of hot water and after about 15 seconds it goes warm again. So you jump again under and it goes hotter until scolding hot!

When trying to put a little bit of cold into it, it goes stone cold again! So fun to having a shower.

You can chose scolding hot or stone cold!
It does this hot water only in the morning when I am having shower. Later in the afternoon when my husband has one is just nice hot water. So the boiler doesn't like me.
Every morning after alarm clock goes I am lying in the bed and choosing between having scolding hot shower or going to the GYM and then having nice warm one! Ha, ha. About 70% of time the GYM will win and yes my boiler is making me to go to the GYM! :-)

Quick DIY - bathroom lock change

We are trying to do a little DIY/ repairs as we go. Otherwise it could overwhelm us. I think that it is important to "keep" house in good repair. We do not want me be suddenly surprise with "whole" house redecorating. This way it is easier to do.
So we have this simple bathroom lock. Left there from previous owners. It is suppose be brass but over the time is just looks dirty (and I clean it every week).

Budget, budget and budget

Yes, yes I am know I am a little bit obsessed with budget sheets. I have made several of them. Like one for my spending when saving for house, then for wedding then for all the cost while buying the house and then after for all our spending while renovating/ decorating our house.
Also I have one for our everyday spending. I just made one in Excel. Nothing fancy, ordinary Money in X Money out and then Total.

Source: web

Easy weekend

We had our very "typical" weekend. You know one of those days where you just catch up with some minor DIY and lots and lost of cleaning.

No clothes buy year - update 1

I am 1 1/2 month into no buy clothes year and still going strong. I have been around shops and I didn't "want" to buy anything.

Working hard & keeping budget

This week is full on working week. I am doing 4 shifts in my second job (plus of course my full time job) I did 37.5 hours of work in 3 days and I have another shift on Friday.

I don't usually work so many hours like that but a lots of my colleagues took holiday and we are a little bit understaffed. It has some pros. I will not spend a penny in 5 days ( because I don't have time to go to the shops :-)  Of course with more work comes more earning and also my "flexibility" to take more shifts and cover for my colleague is giving me more "job security". Basically I hope I am asset to my manager and if it comes to reducing staff I will be not the one to reduce.

Weekend gardening

After over 2 months of rain, rain and more rain mixed together with some wind and some storms there was one glorious Sunday ( not rain + a little bit of sun).
I have spent it in the garden trying to rescue my plants + fixing some fences.
Our 2 panels between us and our neighbour on the right side are very unstable so I have to prop them. Otherwise they will end up in my little herb garden.

Homemade succulent bowl

In the living room on the coffee table we have this big bowl with some balls ( rattan and others). We have inherited it from my husband mum and it made our new house look a little bit more homely. Unfortunately it isn't very practical. It is quite big and when we have our TV dinners it always ends on the edge of the table.

Frugal DIY picture wall

We have this big empty wall in the dining room. Every time while having meal we are always thinking about decorating it. It only took us 15 months to actually do it!

I wanted to put there selection of frames. They can be really expensive.  I saw in Cargo and in John Lewis some black frames which I liked and prices were from £12 to £28 for frame! We needed quite a few of them. So I did a little walk around local charity shops and sew a few frames which with a little bit of love (and some paint) would look great. Most of the frames in charity shops were for £0.99! So much better price for our little budget.

Then I have also bought some cheap frames from the Works. I have paid £4 for 3. They were good just had this neon green colour and were plastic, but painted black nobody will see any difference from expensive wooden ones.

So first I have striped all frames from their pictures. The charity ones had so many staples in them that it took me a while but for that money it was worth it.

Little things box

I have got really nice little box for my "accessorize" jewellery. I usually buy more than 1 pair of the same earrings. I know not very usual but I keep loosing them! So have a number of them.

My nice box has just one problem. It is wooden and my jewellery keep "sliding" to one side and then I can't find anything.

Tidy DIY

Everything in our house has to have its own space. I like to live in tidy and clean house. If I can see mess around me I feel messy too. Does it make any sense?

So like every house we have this DIY drawer in our kitchen. You know drawer where you just put staff which you don't know where else to put it. In our house it got very full so you can not open it without spilling something out.
We have most of our tools in the attic because we don't really have space anywhere else. We have inherited also some DIY bits from previous owners. So they were siting in our "below oven"drawer.
I just couldn't watch it anymore so did quick tidy.

Our very messy drawer.

 

Weekly baking - carrot & caraway seed biscuits

This is my mums Christmas "sweet" receipt. I had make a little change and did it as "salty" biscuits.

Spray paint lamp

My mother in law gave to me her surplus lamp. I really like it but it looked a little bit boring. So I had this idea to paint it very bright colour to make it a little bit "younger"

Home made Pouffe

I have finally finished my pouffe.

 

Pouffe in making

When I have made some cushions for living room I have made them to replace those cushions which you will get with sofa. They are made from same fabric as sofa. I don't know why but I really don't like them. So I have ended up with 2 big cushion covers.
Last week we have been in T.K.Maxx and my husband liked they pouffes. Only problem was, they were not in colour we would like ( and also the price which we would like :-). I was thinking about it and I have this idea to use our sofa fabric cushions to make pouffe! Easy and hopefully it will look better than the cushions!

I wanted something easy and simple. Something like this.

Loft insulation DIY

I have been busy these couple of days. We have been thinking about our extension loft insulation for about a year.

We did loft insulation on main house in the summer + we boarded it so it it perfect for storage. We used sheep wool as it is moisture absorbent and we didn't want to discover that we have to rip everything out because our timber is getting wet.  With sheep wool we will not have this problem. It is a little bit pricey but it is worth it to have a peace of mind. Also it is nice to work with it! No itching!

This is our main house loft. Please mind we got a little bit crazy with staff. Hopefully we will reduce our possessions this summer.

Front door DIY refurbishment

My beloved husband is going on stag do this weekend and that means I will do again some big DIY (I can get house really messy and then put it back together before my husband returns. Last time I have revamped our front door.
They are original 1880 Victorian hardwood doors and they showed it. They are a little bit wonky at the bottom and sometime ago had a problem with woodworm. Original oak threshold was quite damaged by them.
It took me full three days to sand them down, repair what I could and repaint them + put all new fittings in.

 

Weekly baking - Easy custard pudding

This one is my mum's receipt. Easy, quick and very calorie low.
I made strawberry custard pudding with forest berries.

Keeping walls clean

We have a little bit problem with moisture in our house. Victorian houses are not famous for their "insulation". Our walls are solid and very cold and together with cooking, washing and just breathing we have too much of the moisture in the house. We have dehumidifier and it helps and also I open regularly windows for a few minutes every day but sometimes it isn't enough and we get this on our walls.

Decorating bathroom

Our Victorian cottage has the bathroom on the ground floor behind our kitchen. It is not the best set up. Most people like to have a bathroom on same level as bedrooms but we got used to it.
When we first moved in we spend most money and time fixing this room.
It had:

1. leaking taps
2. leaking toilet system
3. rusty toilet holder
4. rusty shelves
5. light switch was monkey
6. shower head kept falling on our feet
7. grout was horrible and flaking
8. all paint needed re-do
9. ceiling light was only bulb (next to the shower!)
10. radiator was not working + rusty
11. shower seals old and not working
12. nowhere to hung the hand towel
13. toilet seat broken
14. door was water stained

Improvising - cushion filler

Today I went to the shops to find cushion  filler for my homemade cushion cover. I needed small rectangular but I couldn't find any. Wilkinson had really cheap one ( £1.5) but it was bigger and square. I will not find any cheaper than that so I decided to make my own and use Wilkinson one for filling mine!

I had this big filler and I needed that smaller rectangular one for my grey chevron cover.