Tuesday 31 July 2012

The Waiting Game

We are still awaiting the builders starting the next phase of works for the B&B. In the meantime we are getting on with some of the work we can do in other areas.

The kid's room

We were aiming to get Kid 1's room completed by the time she was six months, what with the chaos that having your first baby that deadline moved to her being a year.

We managed to fit the fireplace after much time spent finding the right tiles and we had decorated. We realised that in order to future proof her room for the inevitable day she will, no doubt, want to shut herself away from her parents and listen to her music too loudly, look at inappropriate stuff on the internet, use her hairdryer, create fire hazards by placing scarfs over her lamps 'for atmosphere' and recharge her phone/tablet/communication device that is not yet invented and may run on fresh air for all we know OR study by lamplight into the small hours (!!) then she might need some extra sockets. So another year passed and then we were going to get it finished before Kid 2 turned up so Kid 1 wouldn't feel evicted for the newest member. Kid 2 arrived and the electrics upgrade then became swallowed up in 'the B&B plan' and only now have the electrics been completed.


It seems that the closer you get to completing a project the longer it takes. Now the electrics are done all we need to do is redecorate the bits disrupted by the electrics, repaint the woodwork, order and fit the carpet and then furnish it but find an hour here or an hour there to do these things when you have a toddler and a baby is a tad challenging.

My most commonly used phrase at the moment seems to be 'I don't have the time...' and I am questionning if this is really the case. I could get up at 5am and have a least an hour before anyone else wakes up (this assumes that everyone stays asleep and there are not many hours when all my dependents achieve simultaneous sleep) and despite loving early mornings, something about the light at that time of day, that lovely light is going to be hard pressed to get me out of bed when I have been up until midnight with the boy and then awake again at 2 and 4am.

I could do it in the evenings but I am not at my greatest at that time plus the boy hasn't yet got to grips with bed time and sees evenings as a time to ramp up the rampant feeding. In fact, if feeding was an Olympic sport he would have a fair few medals to his name. Weekends are the only time t'husband and I can discuss the project or look at bathrooms/carpets/website briefs/building specs and then there is fitting in family time where we are not just dragging the kids around various builders merchants/home improvement warehouses. Arguably t'husband could do it while I mind the kids but he works all week and wants to spend his weekends with the kids or sleeping or watching the Tour de France/Grand Prix or seeing friends/family or visiting bike shops or fixing his bike (which he was doing until 2am last night - just saying) or organising bike races (there is a theme developing here) and although after writing that it seems that he does have time after all why would he want to be doing DIY instead of all those things?

Some might point out that I could be doing it rather than writing this blog but one of the prerequisites of feeding a small baby is to be sat down so I have plentiful time then (assuming I am not trying to simultaneously entertain a todder) to write the blog* (which I must do more now we are going to be using The Money Pit to earn actual money), set up a Facebook page, to research building materials, find and compare prices of baths/tiles, find a dresser on eBay but not so much time to paint walls or sand skirting boards. I have yet to perfect the art of feeding whilst doing manual labour but I am sure someone will tell me it is possible. 

Anyhoo, this is a round about a lengthy way to go about explaining why there are no 'after' photos of the Kid's new bedroom. You'll just have to wait for those!

*Saying that this blog has been written in numerous sessions over a number of weeks!

Tuesday 15 May 2012

Planning, planning, planning

Well although it seems, according to the blog at least or in fact if you look around the house (you'll have to take my word for that one), that not much has been happening in terms of development of the Money Pit there has been a whole lot going on behind the scenes.

It has always been the plan in order to get The Money Pit to pay for itself, rather than us just throwing our hard earned cash at it, to turn it into a Bed and Breakfast. As this meant a significant injection of cash, it was rather a long term plan which involved selling our other property and then using that money to invest in getting one room ready as a guest room and the dining room floored and decorated for the aforementioned guests use. And then using any money earned to carry on with finishing other rooms. This was fine until we realised getting that the simple phrase 'getting a room ready for B&B guests' involved a new roof complete with improved insulation, a fire alarm system, new wiring, a complete bathroom refit, soundproofing, change of use to guesthouse/residential, new flooring, decorating, kitchen extraction and all manner of other things. Our budget simply didn't stretch that far....so we were a bit stuck and wondered if the B&B would ever become reality.  Then, miraculously, a while back we heard about a funding pot that was being made available via  the Rural Northwest Tourism Connect project, funded through Defra for independent, small hotels and B&Bs in rural areas to apply for grant funding to support renovation projects.

It sounded perfect so I contacted them to enquire if, being in Ramsbottom, we qualified. We did and within a week or so of our initial enquiry, we had had a visit from the Tourism Connect Project Manager (hi Sarah) and had been left with a pile of paperwork/guidelines to go through. The application process was quite stringent and required us writing a business plan complete with the first 3 years financial projections, a detailed budget and project plan for the build including getting hold of no less than 3 quotes from different builders for which we required a complete building spec and an application which asked for milestones, risk analysis, forecasted targets, details of the entire project and a document signed by an accountant to say that our business plan and financial projections stood up!  All well and good you might say and only what most people would do when looking to start a business. The initial deadline for the funding project to end was April 2013. This was perfect timing as, just to make life a little more complicated, we had also found out we were expecting our second child in June 2012. It meant that we could work on the application in the Spring of 2012, have the baby, get used to the baby, if we got the funding we could start the build in late Summer 2012 and be ready to open the B&B in Spring 2013.

But things don't turn out like that. We got a phone call early March to say that the funding project was closing early, a year early! If we wanted to apply we need to get the application complete and submitted for review by mid March in order it could be assessed / approved before the end of the month! We had a week...

Although we had made a start on a number of elements the next 7 days were a blur of researching, writing business plans and building specs, meeting builders, going through figures, meeting with our funding project manager (who is a star) and accountants, checking quotes, refining specs, chasing builders for further quotes as well as still trying to do our day jobs, look after the kid and find time to eat and sleep (the sleeping tended to be the thing that got squeezed!)

After rather too many late nights, a considerable amount of coffee and 'discussion', some tears and a lot of time at the computer, we finally pressed the send button on Monday 5 March. We had done the best we could and if we didn't get it then at least we gave it a go. We got a call on Thursday to say that the internal review had gone well but there were a few refinements we had to make to the application before the panel meeting the following week. Another late night beckoned as the paperwork had to be with the panel  on Friday. On Weds 14 Mar we go the call to say that not only had our application been approved, but it was one of the best business plans they had received! The B&B project was underway....