Adult-ing Milestones

stickyfiddle

2 days ago we were happy renters, and never owned a house, though we were vaguely thinking we might buy something at the end of our current contract in 8 months or so. I'd been debt-free for about 6 weeks.

Yesterday morning we found out our landlord is trying to sell our flat.

Yesterday evening we put an offer in to buy it and the landlord seems happy. So I guess in a few weeks we might be not so debt free...

Yikes!

ThePrettyDamned

Good work! Hope it all works out for you.  

I started adulting when I moved out, but Cambridge was too expensive so I'm back to being 15 and live with my parents. 

However, I'm soon (before Christmas hopefully) going to be self employed so that'll be a bit more adulty. Although only part time as I'm not in a position where I can afford to not guarantee some money coming in. So still a bit 15.

Stevepage

Lol i became an adult when I got married nearly 4 years ago now. Lived with the in-laws for a year then bought our flat. 

Just found out I'm going to be a Dad in 8 months 

randella

I imagine that brings a bunch of positives - I went from renting a lovely, recently refurbished house to buying a shithole, no other word for it. The day I got the keys and had a look around the place with all the previous owner's furniture gone I nearly cried. After a ton of work it looks lovely now and I'm dead happy with it. To be honest, it was probably never as bad as I remember but it was all new to me and I was very apprehensive, also I had very little cash. I've learned a shedload about DIY in a short space of time and now own lots of tools. Adult!

You've lived in your gaff for a while and know exactly what is and isn't wrong with it. I'm guessing it's also habitable and comfortable? You now get the opportunity to change it on your own terms but you're starting from a better base than me, and I guess a number of other people.

Tl;dr - win-win for you, enjoy it in your own time. And mortgage debt doesn't count

stickyfiddle

@randella - Yeah, hopefully!

It's a very standard square-block middle eastern apartment at the moment. Off-white walls, tiled floors throughout, and a dull-as-fuck kitchen. Plan would be to get new kitchen cabinet fronts pretty quickly, paint a few walls, replace all the single-outlet sockets with doubles (with USBs), and then look at getting wood floors and tweaking the bathroom a bit. 

We'll see...!

Handsome_Chris

@randella , you have hit the nail on the head (no DIY pun intended). 

I bought a house, well the bank mostly did so far, a couple of months ago.  I thought that it needed no work. Two months and one housewarming party later I am still sorting stuff out.

This week I'm swapping out the fluorescent strip light in the kitchen for spots.  

Then the shed needs doing.

Or maybe the conservatory needs tinkering with.

Kebabkid

Stevepage said:

Lol i became an adult when I got married nearly 4 years ago now. Lived with the in-laws for a year then bought our flat. 

Just found out I'm going to be a Dad in 8 months 

Great news Steve.Congratulations!!

Great news Mike. Congratulations too!!

57Deluxe

oh for the day of yore when you cold pitch up on a tract of land and if you could build a stone structure with a working chimney and have a lit fire in it by sunset then you were allowed squatters rights...

octatonic

You never really finish a house.

stickyfiddle

Thanks all. This is an apartment on the 42nd floor, so there's not too much we can do to it! 

The good old thing is we've been living in it for 3 years so we know exactly what we want to do and why, which is good 

randella

Good stuff.  I hope I didn't come off as patronising in my previous post - I just had a shuddering hairs-on-the-back-of-your-neck memory of the first day in my lovely new house which was when I realised the carpet was held down with brown parcel tape, the heating didn't work and there was a smell of gas every time you stood at the washhand basin in the bathroom.

Anyway.  My top DIY tip: if you have a carpet fitter coming first thing Monday which gives you Sunday to finish painting the living room, don't go out on the lash Saturday night.

randella

@Handsome_Chris there are still pencil marks on one of my internal doors reminding me of which way round to hang it.  I'm leaving them as a reminder that there is a point at which you think Bugger it, the house looks lovely, let's get a Chinese and forget about it

Handsome_Chris

octatonic said:

You never really finish a house.

@octatonic , you are right: I never finish everything.  That's why you're coming around to do it!   :P

stickyfiddle

randella said:

Good stuff.  I hope I didn't come off as patronising in my previous post - I just had a shuddering hairs-on-the-back-of-your-neck memory of the first day in my lovely new house which was when I realised the carpet was held down with brown parcel tape, the heating didn't work and there was a smell of gas every time you stood at the washhand basin in the bathroom.

Anyway.  My top DIY tip: if you have a carpet fitter coming first thing Monday which gives you Sunday to finish painting the living room, don't go out on the lash Saturday night.

Not at all!! 

I think we're pretty confident we know what we're doing but I am very willing to hear all the basic stuff that may not have occurred to us..!

Handsome_Chris

My next job is conservatory furniture, which mean a trip to MK's Ikea.  At least I'm a pure blood singleton: I get to buy what I want.

Bottom line: No rows about will something fit. 

strtdv

A couple of our radiators have sludge, so I guess my next adulting job will be to drain the system and remove and wash out the radiators, followed by some Fernox.

Oh, and I've been married for long enough now for my wife to accept that I have better spatial awareness than she does, so if I say it won't fit, it won't fit, and vice versa.

randella

Top tip #2:  If you have a modern fuseboard with RCDs (breakers), you can ignore this one.  If you don't, flip the main switch off and pull out the fuse holders one by one.  While you've got each fuse holder in your hand, check the previous owner of your house hasn't, for example, replaced the 15A fusewire for the downstairs socket ring with what looks suspiciously like a metal hair grip.

stickyfiddle

octatonic

Handsome_Chris said:

octatonic said:

You never really finish a house.

@octatonic , you are right: I never finish everything.  That's why you're coming around to do it!   :P

I am? Huh, what?

randella

stickyfiddle said:

Yeah.

My fault really, was being a bit laissez faire and not pulling the fuse before I loosened a socket plate to see what was behind.  Whoever fitted the socket clearly didn't own a screwdriver, the live was unsecured, hit either the neutral or earth terminal screws on the back of the socket, bingo - heart rate in the high 200's.  It didn't exactly calm down after I checked the fuse and found the aforementioned.  It was like the beginning of an episode of Casualty

strtdv

Our house was similar, the outdoor light at the back door is on the kitchen circuit, and when it blew a fuse I looked and found it had obviously been blowing fuses quite a bit, so the owner had just put in higher rated fuses rather than work out what was actually wrong!

The outside light has a short to earth that had eventually caused a small fire. A very simple rewire was all it needed, rather than a 15A fuse in a 5A holder...

I'm tempted to change the whole board to an RCD one, currently it's just the upstairs showers and the cooker that are RCD, apart from the big master one.


On a related note,a friend of mine once blew an 80A fuse when he managed to short the wires connecting the house to the grid with a drill bit! Drill was double insulated thankfully so no damage done.