Tyred

As in, feel a bit like I've been run over by a vehicle (hopefully just a bicycle and thus survivable). Still packing the last items. Still struck by inertia most of the time. Still doing So.Much.Work.

I have been running the store along with Annoying Face for the past three days. Pictorial representation of how I find the warehouse each time I arrive:

If our warehouse were a bedroom.

I responded last night by making sure all the rubbish was taken outside, empty cages were cleared, random items put away, all the things I've seen drive supervisors to distraction. I feel a little bit bad for not doing my share of the physical work, because I seem to spend my shifts just tidying up, doing the legal work and "holding fort". Which is an interesting place to find myself in because I'm still finding my feet. Feels a bit like they left the work-experience kid in charge.

I wish I was more enthused about finishing my move!

Record-Keeping

1. I still have Too.Much.Stuff. Once I finish moving in, I really want to start offloading some of it on eBay.

2. Wall #1 is stripped, sanded, washed and filled. It just needs the patches sanded and then I can prime it.

3. Bought and installed new bulbs in the wall fitting. Still no lights! Pulled it off the wall. The wiring has been intentionally disconnected and safely capped. My first reaction was to woot, since I don't want it in the first place. But it's not safe to fill over it and hide it, in case a future owner drills into it and dies. I can either buy a nice fitting and install that, or I can leave the little cap hanging out a small hole in the wall, and hang a nice picture over the top to hide it. I'm still deciding.

4. I am feeling kind of paralysed by indecision and struggling to figure out what to do next. I suppose the next move should be to set up my temporary bed and move my desk over. But once I do that, I won't be sleeping in the old place again, so the challenge will be to make myself come here to get the last of the packing and cleaning done... which is blechhh. I know that I'm hesitating because sleeping on a blow-up mattress in a construction site is unpleasant. Nobody in their right mind would want to hurry up with that 😁

5. Thinking about replacing my car this year. I don't know what I want instead and everything I might want is more than I want to pay. Boooo. Another one for the "too hard" basket.

Mood: everything is too hard.

What I Done Did

Packed all my clothes and moved them over. Plus my drawers and a bunch of random stuff. (How did I manage to get so much stuff?) My old room is starting to look bare, which is actually reassuring.

While I was over there, I pulled down the crusty fluorescent globe from the kitchen - reflected just how old that thing is by now - until I discovered that both living room lights were incandescent, globes not sold in the past 12 years. And they were both still working. Also, I finally managed to get the bulbs out of the light fitting on the wall. They were tightly wedged into the fitting and wouldn't budge. I was actually researching new light fittings (while very worried about how to safely get a new one installed). I ended up having to go all smashy on the glass, then use pliers on the metal fixing. The previous owner had put high-wattage globes into what should have only held 40w, and had also managed to put globes that were too big to hang onto and remove... cheers, whoever you were, your lighting choices sucked.

I have sprayed the mould under the bay window and hope that it is just due to poor ventilation and a lack of heating for a year and a half. Speaking of heating, the wall heater kept blowing the fuse, so I've bought a new one. It's glass, it looks like a giant phone, and is fancy enough to have an app so that you can control it. This cost me £50 more than the cheapest one I could find, but I figure it will be nice to turn the heating on just before I drive home from somewhere, plus, it looks about 50 years more modern. Now of course I've got to figure out how to get the old one off the wall and put the new one up.

Necessary.

Foolish: I went into the pound shop, with the aim of getting sanding blocks and a small scraper. I also managed to get sugar soap, toothpaste, a car window demister, a pack of snap knives, the mould spray, and goodness knows what else that I've forgotten. Still, I didn't buy any self-goodies, apart from very-necessary Biscoff, so there's that.

Dinner: Fish and chips (well, haddock goujons and hash browns) plus a salad. All free. It almost feels like treating myself to a takeaway!

Official Half-Way Point

Just of the walls.

Not the completed walls, just the wallpaper stripping part.

I think this is a good representation of just how much I'm enjoying the whole process. I'm so afraid of setting off the fire alarm again that I don't dare use the steamer or sander for more than twenty minutes at a time. All the doors and windows are open with the bathroom fan running, and working in this is freezing, but hey, this shall pass.

I have sanded most of the first wall. New plan is to do one wall at a time completely, rather than having shredded woodchip, plaster dust, filler, primer and paint covering the whole flat at once. In theory there will be one neat little corner to put my bed and stuff in, all covered in drop sheets.

Today is a "wash laundry" and "pack stuff" day instead of walls, and I am also going to research and buy the primer paint. I have even researched and selected my coloured paint, too. Ultra-budget. Go me.

Freebies: black tin bread bin, fruit bowl, wire basket, Irish cream liqueur, cheese crackers and cream crackers (thank you, anonymous neighbour). Also my dinner, which is Cajun chicken with cherry tomatoes and green beans.

Things I wanted but didn't buy: all the wardrobes, dressing tables, chairs and lamps that I stupidly keep browsing.

Stop Press: I bought the really expensive primer after shopping around, £72 with free delivery (saving £20 over buying it in person locally). Also, I really, truly wanted to buy the cheap "no frills" kind of primer, but doing a bit of reading tells me that I want the specialty stuff to avoid a world of pain. Life is too short to make all mistakes ourselves, so it's a good idea to learn from the mistakes of others...

Contemplation

The original plan was to get the walls all done and the carpet replaced and have a removalist cart over my stuff from the storage unit, all in thirty days. Well dear reader I have ten days left, and the walls aren't even stripped yet. Even if we imagine that I can somehow perform a miracle then somehow book a carpet fitter in time and then a removalist for the very last day, I doubt I would manage to empty my temporary room in time, in between working full-time.

I've generally been disgusted at myself and resigned myself to going without new carpet for the moment. After all, once I move my bed and wardrobe and shelves and washing machine and and and, it's all in the way of the carpet fitters.

But I think I've come up with an interim plan. I own a blow-up mattress and my desk and chair are here with me already. I think I'm going to move in with my suitcases, finish the walls when I can, then get the carpet sorted and then book the removalist to bring the furniture in. There will be no time constraints then. It'll be like camping! It'll be fun!

This is not the look of happiness.
This is the insanity just before I crack.

By my calculations I will need six trips to clear out my old flat. Of course if I were more organised it could be done in three, but this is me we're talking about and schedules are a joke.

Everybody Is Alert

Today I went over to my flat and spent some time stripping wallpaper. Unfortunately I spent a little bit too much time on the area close to the fire alarm, because guess who set it off? Suffice to say my neighbours must be very impressed with that new chick who's just moving in.

Check out this bad boy.

I had been resolved to do at least two hours of stripping, but once that happened I just didn't trust it not to go off again. I didn't much fancy sitting around for another hour until the steam all cleared. So instead, I went and bought a mouse sander, for getting into all the nooks and crannies. Bang, there goes £20, and also a few quid on a cheeky McDonald's, because it's around the corner from Screwfix so it would be rude not to. At least I didn't buy a drink - am currently treating myself to a 34p glass of Coke at home.

The walls are getting progressively worse as I work. Wall section #3 is half-plasterboard and half-plaster. It's relatively smooth, but has a lovely big seam at eye-height between the two, which I'm sure will be visible after painting. Wall section #4 has a superfine skim of plastering, which is often coming off with the wallpaper, and section #5 is painted in a yucky yellowed paint which sort of peels off once it's warm... probably ancient oil-based lead paint, so that's delicious. I had just started section #6 when I set off the alarm and it's painted dark pink. I'm really trying to understand wtf all the previous owners have been thinking with so many questionable decorating choices, but it's probably more productive just to get on with stripping the layers of crap.

Section #7, which runs the whole length of the flat, has two chair rails on the bottom half of the wall (inexplicably still using woodchip wallpaper in all three sections). I quite like it except for the wallpaper. I am contemplating whether to replace the bottom section with a wood slat effect. Watch this space.

I have set the heating to come on automatically at 10am tomorrow. This will ensure I don't sit at home on my backside until late afternoon. I will need to be there by 11 so that the electricity isn't wasted. And this time I'll take a fan with me and do 20 minutes at a time on the steamer, with some sanding and filling in between while the steam clears!

I've been eyeing a bucket of bulbs for under my windowsill. I am resisting the temptation so far.

Knock Me Down With A Feather

 ...I got the full-time job!

I am still reeling. I really didn't think I would. And the boss was so excited for me. She might not have found much time for me lately, but she really was lovely and clearly so pleased for me.

None of the other applicants even passed their interview, so the position remains open. AF will be filling in, and they'll revisit things in three months' time. She asked what interview questions I got... (same as you, honey) and thinks she didn't get it because she's from Birmingham. 😂 What do you say to that? I'd like to give an interviewer enough credit not to take a Brummy accent personally.

A couple more days of work to get through and then I will have four whole days off... and I really, really need to get busy with the walls of my new place. Time is ticking.

Not Great

So, interview done. I really don't think I smashed it. I did successfully derail the interviewer multiple times and we got chatting about general things (it is always a good sign when they forget they are conducting an interview and are just having general conversation). I answered one question really poorly, the one where they asked me about a big decision I had made in a workplace. It was a lame example I managed to give and I'm not sure that it came across in any way as "big". I did manage to explain that I had taken a risk and explained my reasons for the change to my colleagues at the time and that I even won the manager around in the end.

I also don't think I did brilliant in the "how do I run a shift" question even though I did make it clear that I spend time interacting with all my colleagues. There was that heart-sinking moment when I recognised a "prompt" - when an interviewer has not heard the answer they were looking for and they ask you something more specific to see whether you'll catch on, and give it. Because after I had answered and rambled a bit he asked what I would do if the shop was busy and I had too much to do. At least I spotted what he was after and I talked about what I would prioritise. How I think I got this one "wrong" was by not going with the obvious, looking after the customers in the queue first! Let's hope he took that one as a given...

I also managed to throw in that I had almost entirely trained myself into the role. I also talked about mentoring new colleagues and getting to know my team and how important that is so that you can support one another.

He did a lot of talking about how the team has to come first and how we can teach the skills to the right person, so that technical skill wasn't important to him. And he was good on his word, he didn't ask me a single technical question.

Ehhh. I am still disappointed in myself. I didn't get the chance to tell my two best "stories". But I did get one in, and I hope it was useful.

Flip side: I have managed to extend my main loan, not by a huge amount, but enough to get rid of my credit card balance. Next step: to refinance to a better rate.

Not Easily Defeated

Yet another person has applied. Anyway, I have been researching, and from my travels it appears that the position is decided by the interview rather than experience coming into play. I'm studying like a fiend. I managed to locate the official interview toolkit for my company and I doubt the others will have known it exists.

So I have the gist of what will be asked. In terms of technical questions however, it's hard to know what to revise and study for. I figured out that if I score mediocre for tech and smash everything else, I will make it into the "pass" bracket for the interview, and then I just have to hope I don't get the bottom score of the four of us. I'm not so sure of my chances of actually getting the job.

But fingers crossed.

Levels Of Yay

Managed to get the letterbox lock into place and working.

Fuse replaced - wall heating is working!

Switches and taps figured out - boiler and electric shower are both working!!

Began to remove wallpaper on partition walls - it's coming off easily, and almost intact!!! - and it's plaster BOARD underneath, not loose plaster !!!! and it's in absolutely brilliant condition, requiring no lining and almost zero tidy-up before painting !!!!!

Outstanding.

Some days you appreciate a good dose of yays to balance out a melancholy from other things.

SO satisfying.

Just waiting for my interview now, which is now going to be with a distant store manager that nobody knows. I half want to withdraw from it, but I'll see it though, on the odd chance I say the right things or even just for the interview practice. I'm spending a good amount of time on doing extra work training, and I'm researching the likely questions I will need to answer. I definitely have more training, and here's hoping they ask a lot of behavioural and soft-skill questions, which would definitely be to my advantage.

Done!

I am now a homeowner again, officially 😁

The heating is not working (here's hoping it's only a fuse; but since it's only a wall radiator, it won't really matter if I need to buy a new heater). The walls, on closer inspection, are horrifically covered with very-heavily-painted woodchip wallpaper. Both my own fault, but realistically neither would have changed my mind about buying the place. I am horrified at the idea of trying to produce a paintable finish, so it's time for the long slog - strip, scrub, hang liner paper and then paint. And I may just change my mind...

Workmate has wrangled a carpet discount for me thanks to a family member, which is excellent!

Sad times. A transfer has applied for both of the roles. It now probably means I'm battling AF for the part-time. Oh well, I tried. 

Spendy McSpenderson: all the things so far for the flat, with more to come. A new lock for letterbox, which doesn't fit. Wallpaper scraper when I realised I already have one. Donuts, because, well, donuts.

Extras for January

Bank reward £5.00

Testable Minds £1.11

StreetBees £0.50

HuYu £5.00

Populus Live £50.00

Not great but not bad, I still need to get my enthusiasm up, especially now that my bills will rise.

To give myself a breather as I move into my new place in the next few weeks, I've taken a payment holiday on my personal loan and also on two of my cards - one of which I'll use for "renovation spends" and the other has a balance on it from sorting out the home funds. The holidays last three months and should let me see exactly what my living costs are, so that I can get myself organised.