During this period of time, no articles were written
Now i am not trying to excuse myself but just give the members a reason why there has been a massive gap in the articles for a few years
Having a full-time business to run and a change of domestic circumstances grossly reduced the amount of time I could spend on this website. Let me explain further
My applologies
Firstly, I would like to apologise to all the paid members of this website at that time, as I was not available to add to the content on a regular basis. And to all those that continued to support the site throughout this time, THANK YOU !
Change of personal circumstances
Back in 2016, both myself and my wife had decided to allow my mother to come and live with us in our home. She was quite happy to do this, sharing all the facilities, but it soon became quite apparent that inviting your mother to live with you would mean giving up a lot of freedom and the fact that two women sharing a marital home were not working as expected.
The agreement
We all agreed that my mother would be better to have her own space (this was originally our living room) to do what she wanted and converted it into a fully contained large room and just share the facilities, such as the toilet and bathroom, instead of just having a bedroom up stairs It was also becoming apparent that she was becoming more and more imobile, so we took on the responsibility of doing a weekly food shop as well.
My wife would continue to do all the domestic stuff as before: clothes washing and cooking the main meal of the day, with my mother having her own basic facilities such as a kettle and a fridge for snacks, breakfast, and teas.
No space to swing a cat
This left both myself and my wife with the dilemma of not having a living room anymore, and more importantly, where the hell was I going to put the newly acquired Lowrey Stardust, not a small item as you all can appreciate.
The solution
Well, obviously, we had to have a plan B before we entered into moving my mother downstairs and losing the largest room in the house. For my American friends, the houses here in the UK where I live are not large or have many rooms at our disposal, so a solution needed to be agreed upon before moving anything.
An extension to the house was going to need to be built. We had a good idea of what I wanted and thought we would extend the house out by 3 metres all the way across the back. not 2 stories, just the ground floor.
Bring in the builders
Good plans were prepared, and quotes from local builders were obtained. Now the building trade at that time was saturated, and finding someone to actually do the work at a reasonable price within a reasonable time was becoming a nightmare. We had quoted ranging from £85,000 upto £180,000 This blew me away, as I only had a disposable cash budget of up to £60,000. Also, these quotes were not for a fully finished and decorated extension. . .OHH no, this was basically just for the shell and roofing; all windows and interior plasterboard/plastering of walls and ceiling, electrics, flooring, etc. would be a cost on top of the quote received.
This left us with a serious amount of money short to complete the project. and not wanting to obtain a loan for many years, some serious decisions needed to be made.
Age is just a number
At this time in the dilemma, I was 60 years old, and with 6 years to go before I could officially retire from work,
The biggest decision of my life had to be made: would it be possible to do all the building work myself? and how much would it all cost?
Building experience
I must say at this stage I am not a builder; I have no building experience whatsoever, never laid a single brick, constructed any roofing woodwork such as the rafters, etc., and tiling the roof, any electrical work, and internal construction such as flooring wall boarding and fully plastered all need to be done.
Continue to part 2