Categories: uncategorized
Date: 16 March 2007 14:49:01
Today has been a very fun day for us.
We moved to our house in September last year. Thankfully it needs very little work done to it as it has been looked after by th previous owners and was redecorated in neutral magnolia last year. The kitchen is new and requires minor touch-ups and there is little other work required.
Our first major work is to rejig the garage. At present there is barely enough room for me to get Magda in there. Dad told me that he's finished the drawings for redesigning the garage and that work will begin soon after he returns from his first holiday of the year. I now need to begin preparations for much digging and labouring.
We also want to be as environmentally friendly as possible. As such we want to have cavity wall insulation. This will help to reduce our heating loss through the walls and reduce our heating bills - which aren't that high really anyway.
Before we can do this we have to ensure that we've got everything done to make it effective. Therefore we need to look at having replacement doors in the front and back of the house. The house already has double glazing and patio doors but the front and back doors are wooden and need to be replaced before work can be done.
We had a nice man come round from a local company this morning. He was very friendly and happily measured up and showed us the brochures. He was also very understanding of the cats' desire to look in his cases and walk over his paperwork while he was doing his calculations. He didn't get upset when we said that we wanted to delay the work until we'd got the money together, as we were more interested in finding out a budget at this stage.
This afternoon we had a double event.
Firstly we allowed the cats to have their first outdoors adventure. It was fun watching them tentaively looking outside the front patio door and putting a solitary paw into this new world. They met the cat next door. This seemed to involve them seeing her and immediately "legging it" back inside to safety. Then they got their adventurous spirit together and slowly started to go further away from the house. However at the first sign of visitors they were back inside.
Secondly we had a visit from another nice man. this was came to talk to us about insulating the roof. This consists of spraying a foam layer against the tiles to hold them in place and to insulate the loft to enable us to turn it into a hobby room/office. This includes fitting Velux windows to allow the light in. He seemed more like a "normal" salesman. Whenever we mentioned price he had to calculate our "savings". At one point he had to go outside and talk to his boss, as we wanted 3 windows and not the conventional 2.
He came back with stories about the "one off" Ideal Home Exhibition "discounts" that they have available for orders taken in the next 3 weeks. He seemed a little off put when I said that we were looking at 6 months ahead rather than immediate work.
I remembered all the lessons I learnt from my dad regarding building work and sales scams. The years of working my school holidays for a building firm came back and the guy looked a little nervous that I seemed to know more than the usual punter he sees. However even the none discounted rate was a very good one.