What are you all up to

Been a busy couple of days for us been doing a lot of work on the house we rent out almost finished now. SWMBO has her sister visiting tomorrow night so a night diwn at the snooker club is beckoning for me lol

Kids and Gkids now left after a full afternoon and evening, why do I suddenly feel old. Younger brother skype'd from Malta while they were here so they all managed a good chat and laugh, its been a long time since we've all been together.

Weather still mild here, hope the freezing fog is letting up down south.

Spent the afternoon at DD's working on converting a kitchen cupboard to deep pan drawers.  Went well  but slowly, so have to go back tomorrow once I have made the drawer backs.

While I was slaving away, OH and DD went out to look at Stressless recliners and have found  a few they liked.  Next thing they ring me to go and look at a VW Touareg they had found at the dealer just down the road.

Good spec, good price, just what we need to replace the XC90, pre-registered by the dealer so 4 months old, only 10 miles on the clock, we are going back on Tuesday for a test drive of a similar model.  Very tempted!

It's all gone a bit quiet here. Yesterday the last of the family visitors went home. All that's left behind are a dog bowl (forgotten) and dog hairs on the carpet (not picked up by Grandson's vacuuming).

Probably!  We had recently come to the decision that as the caravan is fine, we would not go for a MH unless we found one that "ticked all the boxes".

However, the problems with the XC90 are becoming pressing, so ideally we want rid of it before an expensive repair becomes essential, and before our next trip away in April.

Our second car is only a 2 seater Smart, so not suitable (with grandchildren) as an only car along with MH. Also, the luggage capacity is very small, just about enough for a main shop.  But it is great for parking in town.

We had originally  thought, if we did go for a MH,  just to keep the Volvo as it is now worth very little, but it's erratic behaviour is worrying.

There are a few things to  check out on the VW, so no decision as yet.

And the same to you Triky and all those attending at Longleat.

Coming up on 95k Ian, had it almost 10 years now, but it has had a lot of problems, more problems than all the other Volvos we have owned added together!  And we have had 15  Volvos since 1972, at one time we had 3 in the family.  We had a 245 for 15 years, a 940 for 14 years, and DD has a V40 (used to be ours) that is 14 years past September

The new XC90 is just a bit on the expensive side, and our experience with this one has rather put us off.

The Touareg is a 3.0 V6 TDI BlueMotion Tech 262 R Line Tiptronic Auto, almost £10k off list price, we could have dark grey metallic or reef blue metallic, the blue is nice, the grey OK but quite dark.

OH is very keen on it, this really would be our last big car this time!

DD's pan drawers now all finished and taken into use, the surplus doors and shelf ahe will stash in her loft, just in case.

She bought the matching drawer fronts, and the metal fully extending runners and sides, I made the bases and backs from panels they were giving away at Ikea, and the high level side rails are recycled Ikea blind rods, Existing handles were reused, so total cost £110 plus my time.

My next task is to make a lid rack that will fit in the spare space in the top drawer.

Tomorrow we are invited there for dinner as a "thank you".

Our towball lock also failed, but out of warranty.

Yes, we have the same Nokians, they are good.  First tyres did not last long, but since then we have been getting around 30k miles from each set.  The Nokians are our 3rd replacement set.