taxes & kitchen

[percival]

I finally did my taxes today. I've now got everything completed, I just need to enter the values I computed into the forms tomorrow. That will give me another opportunity to check everything over once again. If I'm correct, I owe the taxman a couple of hundred pounds (three jobs at the same time, anyone?) British taxes are honestly a breeze compared to German ones. I even prepared my pay slips for 2004/2005 taxes (go me!) Unfortunately, one of my employers where I've been temping doesn't pull all of my income together in their year-end forms, but leaves me to work that out by myself. So it pays to keep one's payslips ... I managed to get by reasonably well because even though I'm bad at actually filing things, I have a place where I chuck payslips, bank statements, etc as soon as they come in, so that every relevant piece is in the right place once I come to sort through the pile.

Next year will be a bit more arduous because that will be the first year I've been self-employed on top of holding several p/t jobs. Should still be not too difficult, thanks to the lovely cash book cynthia_black made me. I anticipate quite a net operating loss there, too, which should ease my tax burden considerably. I hope to get that off and done and dusted in May.

*** ***

While I was beavering away over my taxes, my intrepid husband took down the right wall of kitchen units. He's now scraping off 3-4 layers of wall paper: the original bright yellow with green squares, one with fake tiles and flowers, and one that was white with thin red stripes.
My husband joked that all this wall paper must have been put up by somebody called Renfield (as in "Renfield, you idiot" - made famous by Mel Brooks' take on Dracula).

After a paint job, and replacing eight chipped tiles, the units can go back up, we can finally put up our kitchen utensil rail from Ikea with hangers for tools, spices, and knives. The "new" tiles will come from the back wall, which is unnecessarily partially tiled. The front wall's kitchen units mainly house dishes and cooking supplies, while the units that went down now contain various containers, teas and cooking oils. The final piece de resistance will be the left wall (where the window is). All we have to do there is repaint. Oh joy!

Next on our list: the bedroom (probably mid-February). The acoustic tiles are proving to be rather expensive; soundproofing a 15 sqm room will cost us around £s; 600 without laminate flooring, and for the living room, we expect the costs to be around 1.3-1.5 that sum.

Comments

[awelkin.livejournal.com]

Remodeling is such a good time, but honestly, it's nice when it's finished.

Catherine

[perceval.livejournal.com]

tell me about it. I'm not looking forward to having our kitchen sort of out of commission for a week, but at least it'll get done ...

[chrysantza.livejournal.com]

Wow! You two are intrepid do-it-yourselfers - my hat's off to you. It sounds like your husband had to remove layer upon layer of hideous wallpaper.

[perceval.livejournal.com]

Well, British taxes are really not that complicated - especially if you're a normal employee.

[chrysantza.livejournal.com]

I actually meant the remodeling, more than the taxes. :D Here, though, a lot of people do go to a professional preparer or use a computer program like TurboTax to do their taxes because it is rather complicated if one is self-employed, a homeowner, or otherwise takes a lot of deductions.

[jessanndi.livejournal.com]

Have you concidered sound proof plasterboard. It may be cheaper. And if you send over a sketch and dimensions of the room my hubby can draw ot for you and give exact amounts of what amout pf materials are need so that you can cost it out.

[perceval.livejournal.com]

That's a really generous offer! Who makes that sort of plasterboard? We also have some walls that may need to be sound proofed ...