Renovations
Today I have new curtains in my bedroom. I’m not sure how long we’ve actually had them, but we bought them a long time ago. When we were still a we. They were originally for the lounge, and we were going to buy more to match for the other windows there too. We never got around to it.
Recently he bought curtains for the lounge room - for all of the windows (which is actually one window and two sliding glass doors).
lenda curtains
with gangbar rods
We hung those up a few weeks ago. I hemmed them this weekend, and a pair of the same for the studio. The rod for that room isn’t up yet, and is the same sort of rod as I bought for my room. I bought the much cheaper
Vågen
Vågen rods to go with the bomull curtains that we already had, which I cut down and used the tie backs to make new tabs for the cut off part to make short curtains for the window above my bed.
bomull
Neil helped me put the rods up today. (Or I helped him - I can’t reach up for very long now, there’s no way I’d be able to drill holes at the top of a wall for curtain rod brackets.)
The builder came the other night, to go over what we want for the kitchen. It seems forever ago, but we had an insurance claim in for a burst pipe which was going to replace half of the kitchen. So we got the mortgage extended to allow us to get the other half updated too. I’ve been playing with the ikea kitchen designer software to let me design the sort of kitchen that I’d like. The builder thought it was a great idea and was impressed with the use I made of the space. At the moment there is an awful lot of wasted space. The new kitchen will be just about all usable. I’m talking pokey little corner cupboards here, that we can barely stick an arm into. These will now be lovely big corner cupboards that we can see all the way into. There will be lots of deep drawers, for pots, and tupperware etc. There will be a smaller sink, and a dishwasher! A new cooktop, and a wall oven, and a new fridge. It’s going to be fabulous. I just hope I get to enjoy it for a long time.
I think he’s thinking that it may be a couple of years and then we’ll sell it. The reason he’s happy to go along with this is that doing this not only makes it more livable at the moment, but it makes it a lot more saleable for when we do come to sell it.
We’ve also both paid out our credit cards in the refinance. Our new repayments are going to be our previous mortgage payment, plus what our minimum monthly payment on our credit card was. That adds up to more than the minimum monthly payment the mortgage requires, but it also means that we’ll both essentially still be paying off our own credit cards, just at a cheaper rate. He made me a spreadsheet a while ago to show me the differences in different ways to finance this, and I’ve used that to base our new repayments on. I told him that I’d only do this if he agreed to this way of repaying it. It means that we won’t be paying half each any more, and I know he’ll think that means he’s paying more than me, but his credit card was more than mine, so despite what he may say about him paying for everything, I know that I’m still paying my half. We split all of the other bills 50/50.
Still. He seems to think that he bought me a new car - he essentially did, but I gave him my car for it, so we really swapped, but he doesn’t see that bit. He did buy me a new computer last year. Now he says that he’s buying me a new kitchen. I really don’t see how he sees it this way, but he does.
We both recently bought ourselves a new laptop. Harvey Norman had 40% off all Toshiba laptops. I’d been saving up since July last year, so I thought it was too good an opportunity to pass up, and I got myself a new one -
Toshiba Satellite T230D
He got a much bigger fancier one, which he put on his visa. I sent him an email to work telling him about the sale. He rang me up and said did I want one? I said no, not any more. I’ve already got one. He said how did you buy that? I said with money. What money? he asked. I’ve been saving up! I told him.
I had to get a new chair this weekend too. For the last few days I’ve been using a dining chair at my desk. My old chair was totally killing my back. It had gone lopsided, and sitting in it was making my back tie itself in knots. Now I’m sitting in a new one and it’s so comfortable I can feel my back getting better all the time! He told me the other day he’d buy me a new chair, but I bought this one from Ikea yesterday.
Verner chair
I didn’t really have the money, but I really needed a new chair, so I got it anyway. I’ll have to pay it off with what I’d usually save each fortnight.
Stephanie will be ten next friday. How amazing is that!? She’s having her birthday party here next Saturday. A jewellery making party. We’ve sorted out lots of beads etc for them to use, and I also found lots of tutorials for things that I thought they’d like too. Stephanie has chosen a few so we’ll make sure we have supplies for them too. They’re all jewellery or one sort or another. I made her a pinterest board of party ideas so she could let me know what she liked.
All three of the kidleths have always communicated with me via the internet, but Stephanie is now really able to do it.
I have found two projects that I want to do, that I plan to do in my blog, so hopefully as soon as I start them I’ll be posting more!
I think that’s all for now. My washing machine is about to come to the end of it’s cycle, which means I have to go hang sheets on the line.