So, I'm 32 but I've been retired for 4 months now. It's a mini-retirement covering all of 2016 and probably some or all of 2017 - we'll cross that bridge when we get to it. I discussed the details of how and why I decided to retire in my last post.

One of my retirement project was buying the house that we will hopefully live in for the next 10 to 18 years, although don't quote me on that because I have a tendency of getting bored of houses and wanting to move on. 

We made an offer at the end of Jan and the transaction completed on 31-March-2016 bang in time to help us avoid an extra £9,000 in stamp duty tax. eeek! The new tax rule went into effect on 1-April-2016 and it essentially says that if you buy a house whilst you own a previous a home you need to pay an extra 3% in tax.

Anyhow, here is the video of the refurb and because someone always asks, I give a breakdown of costs below. 

Necklace by Stella & Dot - obtained from ChikoM's store

Builder: Nicu (Sutton Coldfield, Birmingham): 07758 947830​

Refurb Costs & Items, links below

If you want to buy a house to let out or you don't plan on living there long you'd probably spend less than we did because you don't have to go for top notch everything and you don't need extras like instant hot water taps and underfloor heating. Those would just eat your profit margin without adding any real value.

To view this list properly you need to look at the desktop version. It won't show well in the mobile version. I've hyperlinked some of the products in case you want to get the same stuff.

​I know £32,000 disappeared from our bank account during this refurb but I can only account for about £30,500. There must be one large ticket item I'm forgetting.

Have you ever felt tired? Like really, really tired? Like so tired you just want to shut the world out and chill out on your own? Yes? I’m pretty sure it happens to most people at some point in their life and that’s how I found myself feeling late in 2015.
 
Chester, my little boy, was not even one yet and I was trying to do so much – be a great mum and run a business. I kept myself so busy that I was working again pretty much two days after giving birth. I didn’t feel I deserved a total break so I worked whenever Chester was sleeping and I also got a nanny to come round for 10 hours a week from when he was about 8 weeks old.
 
Anyway, I won’t bore you with the ins and outs of my childcare routine all I’ll say is you can only do so much before your body says stop, NOW!
 
In addition to my Virtual Assistant (VA) who works 20 hours a week, I tried to hire a couple of people but it didn’t work out so at the end of January I thought, you know what, I’m going to retire. I’ll let my VA do what she normally does and I’ll do almost no work until I start to feel like it again and so that’s what I did.