A month full of 'quotes'

I've been doing my best to add a post each month and as I was finishing off my work tonight I realised the month of August was all but gone! Now where did that four weeks go?

For the majority of the time we have working on the house in one way or another. We have three 'live' projects at the moment, well four when I come to think of it.

The main one has been a redesign of the Kitchen, it's something we have wanted to do since we moved in but its a bit expense so we have been thinking about doing it ourselves. Just to give us peace of mind we decided to get a firm in to give us a 'proper' quote and we chose Wickes seeing as it was just up the road and supposed to be reasonable.

Well the 'proper' quote turned out to be a cross between a dose of daylight robbery and a kings ransom and then they wanted £2k to install it.

We also wanted to get rid of the larder cupboard in the existing kitchen and put it in the utility room and then his would make way for the fridge. We reckon we could do this without much hassle and that job is definitely on the list sometime soon.

Anyway the main kitchen has gone on the back burner for a bit. Talking about burners we had a our 'plasterer chappie' round the other day to give us a quote for a little job and while he was here he had a look at our fireplace, he said it wouldn't cost too much to re-instate the chimney which would enable us to have a log burner. He said his cousin was in that line of work so we gave him a ring and he reckons it would cost £1,200 plus the burner. Its about what we expected to be honest.

The plastering job turned out to be twice as pricey as we estimated so that was three quotes in the space of a couple of weeks and none of them had us jumping for joy. We just wanted the walls skimming under the stairs.

We have took the panels off and opened up the space under the stairs and want to put some storage cupboards in. Most of the walls will be hidden so we are not going to pay a fortune to make a wall look nice only to then put a cupboard in front of it. One thing I have never done is plastering so I thought it's about time I gave it a whirl and save us a few quid at the same time. Anyway its done and after some sanding its looks ok, i'm no professional and i'm not about to volunteer to do anymore but I gave it my best shot.

We are having a new hall floor put down in the morning and then we can crack on with painting the space and fitting the units. We are getting the cupboards from the Wickes DIY section at Aintree at a fraction of the price the kitchen stores sell them for. Quite ironic really.

Our 'grow your own' project is coming along nicely, we have had loads of potatoes already and will soon be digging up the main crop. Tomatoes have been a big success seeing it is our first season, lessons have been learnt but we are quite happy with the haul so far.

Suzy has been the chief producer thus far, she has made lots of Jam with the raspberries and has tried out various sauces and chutneys with the tommies.

Elsewhere we are having another go at fostering a dog, our last successful foster dog was Sabre, he was an 11yo GSD and we are still in touch with his new owner Christine. Sabre is doing so well and really couldn't have gone to a better person.

This time we are going to the other end of the spectrum and taking responsibility for a Puppy from Romania. Harry is less than 6 months old and was abandoned along with his mother, brothers and sisters. They were found under some large rocks in a forest, rounded up and taken to a shelter. He looks a smasher and he arrives on Thursday and hopefully we will find him a proper home that he deserves. The grand plan is to sort Harry out and then bring another 'forest pup' over but that's a long way off yet.

I'm sure next months episode will be all about when Harry met Shaddy!