Working From Home Not!!
I have been “working” from home for the last 9 months. Well I say working in truth I have been at home for the last 9 months and have not got anything real work done, so things have to change as I am far to young to retire.
I have decided that although we will not be starting building for several months, I am going to move my office on site, I have an ideal building there I can use with a great view. I have set the office up over the last couple of days and I am now just waiting for the broadband to be connected and it will be ready to use.
It will miss the lazy mornings seeing the kids off to school and being there when they get home but I have to get real.
Why Build In This Financial Climate?
Untitled DocumentI keep getting asked the same question. When everything is hitting the fan in the financial and housing market’s why on earth would you want to build a house?
And it is a reasonable question, house prices are on the decline, mortgages are tougher to get and while rates are stable arrangement fees have got more expensive. Builders around the country are moth balling sites and in some cases selling of some of their land banks and laying off staff.
So my feeling is that labour rates will start to decline, all the trades have had a very good time of it over the last few years and now with the lack new builds starting competition will drive down rates.
As for the builders merchants and trade suppliers are just like most retailers at the moment and will be feeling the squeeze so there has got to be deals to be had.
So for those reason I think it’s a good time to build, apart from anything else it will be a great home for us.
Paddock is overgrown
I had not been down to the paddock at the end of the garden for months as I had just lost interest in the whole place, what with the length of time the planning has taken.
Now the planning is in place I have got some renewed enthusiasm for it all but boy did I get a shock last week when I ventured down there, The brambles and weeds have gone bonkers some of it is 4 or 5 feet tall.
So it is now my mission to get it cleared, luckily I have a Kubota with a 6′ deck so it is not going to be a manual thing but it is sure to take some time to get it back under control.
After several days it is starting to look a bit better.
Once the brambles have died back I can get the deck down on the floor and it should be managable.
Homebuilding and Renovating Show
Untitled DocumentJust got my Free tickets for the Homebuilding and Renovating Show thanks to John Edmunds at Welsh Oak Frame.
We will be going up to the Excel in London next Friday, this is our 2nd visit since we bought our plot, our planning application started that long ago I reckon a lot of the technology we had chosen will be out of date now.
There are a number of products I need to research, like every one else at the moment I am concerned about the rising cost of utilities in particular heating. As we plan on living in the new house for at least the next 10 to 15 years I am going to look at the overall cost of heating over that period of time when choosing a heat source so that is no 1 on my list.
I am pretty sure we are going to have some form of rain/waste water collection for washing and flushing the toilets so that will be no.2 on my list. My other areas of interest are CCTV and security, TV and audio, home automation and kitchen gadgets.
Having said that I will be on the look out for anything innovative, problem with innovation is the cost!
I will report my findings next weekend.
