A taxing situation

Last week I got a letter from Parcel Force telling me I had received a package from New Zealand. They were holding it until I paid £28.64 VAT and a £13.50 clearance fee. I had no idea who had sent his package or what was in it so was loathe to hand over £42.14 for what could be something I didn't want. Heck, £40 buys an hour long massage, a hair cut or a week's worth of lunches.

Rob found out that my sister-in-law had sent me a painting for my upcoming birthday and was horrified that I wouldn't just pay to have it delivered. As the item was a gift this riled me even more - surely gifts are VAT exempt? Especially as the painting has no proven value (my sister-in-law has never sold a painting). I emailed customs and got an auto reply which basically said "Pay up or we'll ship it back. If you want to query the VAT you can take it up once you have received the item". As my sister-in-law had paid NZ$70 to post it over it seemed unreasonable to send it back as she'd have to spend the same again to re-ship it with a lower value on the customs declaration.

I was still annoyed about the unfairness of the situation when Rob volunteered to pay up so that the package would be delivered in time. And despite all this drama, I really do love the painting. It'll look great in our house if we ever get around to hanging it up (yes, I know this was a mission a few weeks ago but so far not a single bit of art has made it onto the wall...)

The moral of the story is if you are posting something to another country, don't over inflate the value of the item on the customs declaration, even if it's marked as a gift. (Rob would probably add something about my being ungracious and that I should've just paid without querying it, but that goes against my nature)

Re-mortgage fun

Hello spring, about freakin' time. London seems to have been suffering from the mother of all deluges for what feels like weeks and now we've had two consecutive days of blue skies. The park is popping with flowering bulbs and it's nice to cycle without having to wear horrid waterproof tent trousers.

Spring is about the nicest thing to happen this week. I am suffering from a comedown - Depeche Mode's Tour of the Universe is now over and I only got to see them five times. Pictured at top is the side view from the front row of my box seat at the Royal Albert Hall a couple of weeks ago.

And as of yesterday our mortgage went up six and a half times.

Yeah it's a massive sum compared to what we've been paying, but it's still lower than it was when we actually bought it, so I'm trying to look on the bright side (AARRRGGGGGHH). Mind you, we could knock nearly £200 off a month if we can get the bank to reassess the valuation it gave us by a relatively teensy sum (within the £10K "margin of error" apparently).

The problem is 1. our mortgage broker is leaving her job next week and 2. there's a massive backlog at the bank.

Hopefully this will be sorted very soon. In the meantime, the babysitter has been cut to two nights per month and it looks like our Easter holiday will be spent in the vicinity of the house (AARRRRRRGGGHHH).

And breathe.

Mirror, mirror on the wall

This may come as no surprise to those who see me every day, but we're lacking well-placed mirrors in this house. Our last flat had a wall of windows in the bathroom so everything from flossing to makeup application was usually done with strong daylight. Here though, all three spaces designated for personal grooming are in badly lit, internal spaces. I decided to remedy this on the back of my de-junking project and started looking around for a suitable mirror.

Rob hates frou-frou so anything tongue-in-cheek was out (I did think a massive ornate gold thing might be OK but this was met with near hysteria) so my mission was to find something mid-century and preferably teak to match the cabinet/bar.

I don't have the time or inclination to trawl round second hand shops at the weekend so off to eBay for me. I found the perfect mirror... but forgot to bid on it (it went for £16.50). Luckily there was a slightly smaller one (75cm high) available as a Buy It Now item (£24.99 + £9.99 postage) - pictured top of this page. It arrived today but unfortunately when I opened the extensive packaging it was broken (pictured below).

Fortunately, my local mirror and glass guy was open late tonight, and he cut a new piece of glass and fitted it for £20. An hour after opening my package I had it back again looking, well, as good as new.

I guess there's a lesson in there about ordering glass objects off the internet, but all's well that ends well.

Clearing out clutter

This past weekend was the first time - in about two years? - that we had absolutely nothing social pencilled in. A completely free Saturday *and* Sunday is pretty much a rarity since having kids. The goal was to spend both days unpacking the stacks of boxes that have been bugging me for the last year so that the bank valuer could see the space without being distracted.

Somehow on Saturday we ended up having brunch at the local pub with some other parents and the attached children, mashing together enough tables to seat the 13 of us. We spent an hour freezing in the playground before moving on to another pub. All the while I was thinking about those boxes. We managed to offload our kids onto a spontaneous sleepover (thanks Sara and Chris!) and went out for dinner. Sunday morning came and went. We got the kids back after lunch. And still not a lot happened with those boxes. Then something clicked and in a manic frenzy we somehow managed to clear every single one out of the TV room and either deal with the contents, or hide them elsewhere. It took four or five hours of solid sorting but it's made such a huge difference - the hallway from the TV room to the office is huge! We can use our retro Danish bar again! I can't believe it took 15 months to get around to doing it, but it goes to show that a tiny bit of determination gets you there in the end...

Downstairs wall update

This is a white expanse of wall. And it may look like the most boring thing you've seen in a while but if you scroll back through these posts, you'll see that this used to be home to a rusty, ancient boiler. The Polish builder managed to get it looking pretty good, though it will need proper plastering at some point to make it super smooth. In the meantime, the only reminder that the boiler was there is the old power point to the top left of this photo, and that will be replaced with a less noticeable face plate sometime in the next millennium.



The rest of the room looks like the photos above and below - even on a grey, overcast day there's loads of light. The whole motivation for moving the boiler was to increase the value of the property - and reduce our massive gas bills - and the valuer came around this morning. Unfortunately bank valuers are somewhat more conservative than real estate valuers so we're sitting tight and hoping that the figure he comes up with will allow our new mortgage rate to be something reasonable... it's all based on how much we owe vs how much the house is worth. We should know in the next couple of days.

Boxes and art

A few weeks ago we were visiting friends in New Zealand who'd moved into their new home around the same time we moved into ours. They haven't undertaken any major renovation work but the house felt more finished and welcoming. A few days ago we were inside our next door neighbour's place, again, no major renovation just some cosmetic improvements. And yes, it felt more finished too.

The difference with both of these homes was that they had no boxes piled up to the ceiling and their walls were adorned with artwork and photographs. We've been so busy focussing on all the "big" fixes that we've ignored the little things that make a home, well, a home.

I don't do New Years resolutions, but if I did it would be sort out our house this year. I am delegating the concrete counter fixes and splashback ordering to Rob, and I'm going to start dejunking the rest of the space. Those boxes have to go!

Rob and I don't have the same taste in art at all, but he did like the print I bought for our wedding anniversary last year from Etsy (pictured top) - the colours aren't the same as the one in the photo, but with any luck it'll be up on our walls shortly and I can post an actual photograph of it.

Office, boiler & outdoor furniture

This is the office nook with the desk and computer back in place. As you can see the boiler is kind of... dominant, and while a lovely bit of kit, it does make some odd noises. We've had a quote in from the Polish builder to house it in a cupboard with shelving underneath. This solution will muffle some of the gurgles and clicks. Not sure exactly when that's going to happen - we need to have the discussion about whether hiding the boiler in a cupboard will add value to the house in the first instance (to get through the mortgage valuation). If not, it can wait for a couple of months.

We arrived back in London on Sunday at 5am and got home a couple of hours later to find our garden was covered in snow. We knew it'd been snowing thanks to the panicked round-the-clock news coverage, but as it happens, the snow was beautiful and despite coming from a tropical climate, we didn't think it was particularly cold.

Annoyingly now that the snow has melted, I can see that three coats of Ronseal hasn't saved the wood on the table (which we only bought this summer) - the wood looks absolutely knackered and swollen with moisture. I'd think about swapping it with our lovely neighbour's identical table but I suspect they might notice. Or worse, be reading this blog!

Making good the wall

The weeks leading up to Christmas were crazy. Not only did the boiler get replaced (and relocated) but we had a lovely and efficient Polish builder over to make good this gaping hole that was now in the downstairs wall. Here it is pictured above, with newspaper covering to try and keep in the polystyrene balls which filled the wall cavity.

A week before Christmas we left the UK for a three week holiday to New Zealand and Malaysia. Three weeks is the longest holiday we've had since moving to the UK over ten years ago.

The dust and debris and suitcases (and cost!) seem like a distant memory as I write this from the Tanjung Rhu resort in Langkawi, especially reading that it's snowing in London this week.

The photo below shows the results of "making good" the wall after the first day, more pics to come of the wall after the plaster has dried. In the meantime, I'm off to try and find a sun lounger that hasn't been reserved by some over enthusiastic visitors from Germany...

Cosy...

Aaaah. Toasty warm house. I am writing this (literally) underneath the new boiler. It's making a comforting humming sound and the occasional rattle as gas or water moves through the pipes and vibrates into the hole shown at the top of this page. The new boiler is going to be housed in a cabinet (yes, another excuse for a bespoke cabinet) which should muffle the sound a bit. The lovely Polish builder who is "making good" the various holes and cracks around the house is popping back in the new year to sort the cabinet.

This photo above shows our sliding door solution - it's hung from a runner which is attached to the ceiling. I am so digging the sliding door action that I would recommend them for any room, preferably pocket ones if you can get inside a wall though. Unfortunately while our hung door looks impressive, it's quite heavy and the builder had to sort out a ceiling crack which appeared recently near the runner. The photo also shows the teeny hole made in the ceiling to accommodate the pipes into the new boiler.

And the photo below shows the boiler in it's new position in the spare room. It cost around £2,800 all up and took nearly three days to install, but by golly, it was worth it - we have OK water pressure in the shower and the heaters are all working better. Result.

Boiler update

I bet you've been wracked with nerves wondering what's going on with our boiler haven't you? No? Oh. Well I'll tell you anyway. Our mortgage is up for renewal early next year and in order for us to get a remotely agreeable interest rate we need the house to be worth quite a bit more than what we paid for it. We've done the sums and they stack up, but unfortunately our next door neighbours sold a few months ago for quite a lot less than what we paid for ours two years ago (because of a chain they needed a quick sale blah blah blah). This means that the value of our house will probably be lowered so that the postcode is all lined up, or whatever the excuse of valuers is.

So, we're going to bite the bullet and move the boiler up a floor into the spare room and box it in there, as having it on show in the dining space is an eyesore. This means my bespoke cabinet is getting further and further away, but it should mean the valuer sees a more streamlined - and expensive - looking property.

As for the boiler dilemma - the plumber reckons our water pressure is 1.7 bars so he says we can have a combi. This is good news because I just read this on a website: "Do not use water from a hot water system or your bathroom taps for drinking or cooking because it usually comes from a storage tank in the loft and is not as fresh or as safe as water directly from the mains." Gah! When hungover I have definitely refilled my bedside glass from the bathroom, and usually give the kids water from the bathroom to save trekking up and down two flights of stairs.

The combi is being delivered on Wednesday and it should take no more than one or two days to install. Of course there'll be a heck of a mess afterwards so we'll need a builder over soon into the new year to "make good" the plasterboard and flooring that will be ripped up to find the pipework. The combi won't have hotel quality water pressure like our current power shower, and it will cost about £2,800 all up (plus whatever the builder charges).

Putting a pump on the header tank in the loft (and installation) will cost another £500, but we're going to see if we can live with normal water pressure first. We used to at our last place so unless it's really bad I guess we'll get by. It is fabulous being able to run a bath in about three minutes but it's not actually necessary. My only concern is if the pressure drops off when someone flushes a loo or runs a tap in another part of the house. Our washing machine and dishwasher are plumbed with cold water only so they shouldn't have any impact on the shower. This is the sort of stuff people normally take for granted, but actually it can make a difference to your life if done badly.

Oh and the photo at top has nothing to do with this post, but the kid on the cover is my daughter from a shoot she did nearly three years ago. This issue of Junior is the January issue and is out now at all good news stands in the UK...