What are you all up to

Just reading how bad your area is Nellie, we still have some snow, but it’s freezing rain that isn’t helping here. Take care.

Glad you feeling a bit better Millie (and Mr Millie). We are both fighting off the start of a cold, a lost battle we know, but onwards and upwards. Hope others are ok, 

David K I remember my father getting the £10 Christmas bonus for pensioners for the first time and he was absolutely delighted. It was obviously worth a lot more then than it is now!

Did your boiler service man ever turn up WN?

I hope your colds don't turn out to be too bad TDA. I hate this time of year there are so many illnesses about.

Very wet here this morning with a lot of standing water about. At least I won't have to go out and defrost the bird's water bath.

I discovered that my car was running on empty when I was driving home late afternoon yesterday and I couldn't be bothered to stop at the fuel station in the wet and the dark so that is this morning's job.

NO Millie they didn't. I did get a phone late in the afternoon which is more than I got on Friday. It's rescheduled for tomorrow afternoon. Fingers crossed.

Raining here, has been all day. Decided to get some shopping in for the freezer so we don't have to do so much over the Christmas period. Also called into GoOutdoors for a couple of items for replacing some items that have conveniently fallen apart in time for me to pronounce the replacements as presents. I hate having to find stuff for myself at the best of times and in years gone by have happily settled for annual memberships of various organisations.

Good timing for colds Ttda. Hope you can stifle them.

Its been bitterly cold here for the last week, lowest we got to in our village was -7c. we've not had any snow just very heavy frosts that don't lift all day. Loving our new car that we got before going away in September. Its got heated seats and steering wheel, absolutely lovely in the weather we've had.

Had a couple of trips into town, one was to get our winter flu and Covid jabs and the other was to go to the bank and sort out a few things. Tend to do most things online these days but every now and again it pays to go into branch.

Managed to get a few jobs booked for the house, plumber lined up for changing our heated towel rail in the bathroom back to a radiator. Heated rail looks nice but doesn't heat the room, so not much use. Trying to get a plasterer in to redo the lounge ceiling, proving a bit more of an issue as he can plaster but doesn't put up plasterboard need a joiner for that, trying to tie in both of them at the same time isn't easy.

New lounge suite arrived and quite happy with it. I know we should get the ceiling done first but hey ho. Kitchen is next on the list of jobs to do but its not a big job just a repaint of what little walls that aren't covered by cupboards. Garden needs a fair bit of work but way to cold just now and everything is frozen solid, good excuse 

We have a slow but steady that today, with very light rain all day, but still lots of compacted snow about. We have postponed our trip to the C&CC's Windermere site until Friday and hopefully by then all the roads will be clear.

Tda, so far we have not had freezing rain, hope that the thaw soon gets to you too. I too am trying to fight off a cold, not something that I often get.

TG, thankfully we have not had temperatures as low as you have had. I did get a warning from Swift when it first got cold that there was water still in one of the van's tanks and advised to drain it down. It was the flush tank that still had fluid in it so I did as suggested.

I know what you mean about the towel radiators TG!

 Our daughter had them in her previous house, but it was a super insulated newbuild , now she has a 100 year old place, where the previous owners must have been very hardy, as 3 of the  bathrooms only had small towel radiators.

 3 are "en suite" and the 4th is a shower room by the front door that they do not use for showering.   The 4th bedroom they use as a study, so if we stay over, we are on the sofas.  They are only 4 miles from us, so staying over is infrequent.

Her en suite is quite large, so it did have a very puny radiator, and a small towel rail, so she now has a bigger double convector radiator plus a 6 foot tall towel radiator, which also has an electric element for summer use.  

The 2 other en suites have new tall towel radiators, also with electric elements, but there was nowhere at present  for ordinary radiators as well.  They have only redone 2 bathrooms, so the 3rd one can maybe be reorganised to allow a decent radiator to be added, but that will be several years down the line.

Our bathrooms all have decent radiators, and originally small electric towel warmers, on timers.  The 2 we have redone still have the radiators, and now taller, modern electric towel warmers, all on  new timers.

After 30 odd years we reckoned it was time we went for electronic timers.

I'll have to look into it all after Christmas, I think.  Whether we go for a local builder/ firm, or a larger company will depend on two things, I reckon:  the cost, and a decent warranty.... 🙂  Thank you for the advice.

David

We must be very hardy. Heaters in bathroom (only the one)? No!.

Heaters in bedrooms? No!

When we moved into this large farmhouse after my father-in-law died, we had it rewired. It such an endless job as the electrics hadn't been touched for years, and so disrupting that I couldn't face doing it all again in case we ever wanted central heating. So now, nearly 30 years later we're warm and cosy downstairs (two woodburners and a solid fuel Aga) and rather cooler upstairs. I do admit to having a couple of portable heaters for when it's really bad.

This is the estimate for the original electricity installation.

Goldie

That would be about a £1000 in modern day money but I somehow imagine it would cost much more that that to have similar work done today? Its quite horrifying how inflation has impacted on the price of things even in my lifetime. 

David

You are indeed way hardier than us Goldie.

While we do not usually heat our bedrooms, although they do have CH radiators, we do like it  cosy in the bathroom.    As discussed, in the bathrooms  we have both a radiator and a towel warmer/dryer, PLUS a 2kW electric wall mounted fan heater  for summer use!

There were 5 of us living here originally, hence the multiple bathrooms, but now just the 2 of us, so mainly only our bathroom and the upstairs toilet that get used these days.  

( We have an upside down house with our bedrooms downstairs and the kitchen and living rooms upstairs, plus MIL's "granny flat",  to take advantage of the views as we are on quite a steep hill. )