Looking for Loanstock

Well, I didn't realise it had been quite so long since we had done a blog post - and how things in the co-op have changed since then! Those of you who know us in person will have a good idea of the happenings at Golem HQ, but for those unfamiliar I will provide a quick overview. If you want to skip the overview, scroll to the bottom for the inevitable bit where we are asking for help ;)

In January we got some builders in to do a couple of days work building a cupboard and putting a new door into one of the downstairs bedrooms. We could easily afford the work though, so yay!

Two days later they told us that the house had started to fall down. We could still afford to spend a bit more so that was fine.

A few days after that they told us that actually it was falling down because someone in the past had removed almost everything that should have been holding it up. We started to feel a little worried about the money side of it.

*dramatic music* Suddenly there were props everywhere holding the place up temporarily, structural engineers and all sorts coming in and literally shaking their heads in despair at the work that had been done to the house in the past. We were wondering how much this was all going to cost, but it being that it's not really a very good decision to not stop your house falling down, we had to let the work continue.

At some point it became clear that the entire basement room of the house and half of the ground floor had to be completely ripped out, including whole floors, ceilings, walls and staircases. We thought, right, if all this is going on, let's also do all the work we know these areas need or that we want to make our house more suitable for communal living. Let's do it once, and do it properly, unlike all the people who had messed up the building before.

This is how we went from this (dingy, cramped, poorly laid out) communal room...

 

... to this :D Bright, airy, much bigger communal room with a more logical layout, better access to the garden and a dinner table which actually fits all the Golems around it properly. 

It's the shizz, really it is. But unfortunately the downside is that during the course of this work even more problems with other bits of the house were discovered on top of the things which we already knew needed doing (like all the roofs) so our things-to-fix list has become both shorter and longer at the same time.

And we had the cash to pay for some of it, and an unexpected loanstock offer to pay for the next bit, but for the rest of this job (and the others) we are wondering if you would like to help.

Loanstock is by far the most affordable and straightforward way for the co-op to borrow money, so if you would be interested in investing in a local housing organisation for a fixed period of time at between 0% and 3% interest, please do get in touch. I have added more information about loanstock here so that those of you thinking about it can get the details, but the very best thing to do is to come round for a chat and a cup of tea in our lovely new living room. Drop us an email at golem.coop@gmail.com and we can tell you all about it :)

- Hannah

p.s. In the course of all this it became clear that buying next door was a very challenging option financially and then it went under offer to someone else and that was the end of that. We are still hoping to expand in the near future and are always up for helping other people to set up co-ops. Getting the big repair work on this house done will actually contribute to making both of those things easier, so although it seems like a distraction it is all still helping toward our master plan. Phew!

Finishing Touches

OK, so the title is a bit of a misnomer. The kitchen still isn't finished, but it is getting closer by the day. As we're meant to be doing a major loft re-fit in under two weeks, we're hoping that all the loose ends of kitchen work can be done by then in order to preserve everyone's sanity and access to tea and tasty noms.

We took the broken washing machine from downstairs to the dump, and yesterday the working one from the upstairs kitchen (soon to be our spare room) came downstairs to take it's place. One fridge that came with the house went on Freecycle, and we moved the upstairs fridge down to join the fridge I brought with me. We don't know the rating of the fridge which came with the house, but it was a lot newer than the one we freecycled so hopefully it's more efficient too. Mine is A rated, so despite the two fridges we are hopefully keeping bills down a bit. Eventually we may get a single full-height fridge, but that's a little way down the line at the moment.

A space which has been left for a large floor-to-ceiling pantry cupboard has been temporarily filled with shelving units which people didn't want any more. This is mostly because we have so much to do that building a large cupboard feels a little way off, and the shelves will make a good interim measure.

There are still shelves which need to be built for communal food/spice/tea supplies, but the one storage-building job which has been done is the magnificent pan rack. Everyone wanted to avoid having a Cupboard of Doom (you know the one: 13 saucepans, none of which fit inside each other properly, with all the lids rolling around and all the other kitchen gear balanced on top) and a pan rack seemed a good solution. Cassian is going to ruthlessly sort through our massive amalgamation of cooking equipment to leave us with a gloriously minimalist, yet functional, set of gear, and most of it will be hung up here for easy access. Huzzah!

Pan Rack of Glory next to our temporary pantry shelving

Just to sing it's praises a little more, the pan rack is made partly of various curtain poles from around the house which were no longer fit for purpose, and is height adjustable at the front so we can get it to a level where Flick (the shortest Golem) can reach things but Sven (the tallest Golem) doesn't hit his head all the time.

I think we're all feeling rather pleased, not only that we made something sturdy and practical, but that we're trying to make a shared house that feels beautiful and loved. This feels like a very satisfying contribution towards that goal, and we're all a bit happier because of it. Also, it has shiny bits :)

On a much more practical level, this mini-project was the first one which used our new budget proposing system, which I will write more about in another post. Happily it came in under budget too. Win all round.

- Hannah