Taking the piss of our dad's kindness: I have serious issues I need to communicate to my sister, but I cant get a word in through Icing and Baking tales.

[Quinteszilla]

I love my sister, and mostly I care about what she has to say.

But she is on a baking frenzy. She bakes 5-8 full celebration cakes per week, plus cupcakes and brownies, to fund her dds trip to Cern with her physics class (A level physics)

Every phone call is at least 20 minutes of what sponge raised, which one did not, Italian cream cakes, French fruit tarts, various ways of making chocolate cake, icing, and how they have been decorated. The joys of cheesecake, the perfect pouring of jelly over fruit tarts and on and on!

There is no stopping her, and frankly, calling Spain to be regaled with cakes I cannot taste, is boring, and not to mention expensive.

I dont want to seem supportive, but come on this is likely to continue till the end of summer term!

The other issue is that she has decided to build a kitchen in an old bedroom upstairs in my dads house. There is space, the top floor is currently three bedrooms, a sitting room, a toilet with a sink. One of the bedrooms has a sink, so plumbing, and she is going to spend 5k on installing a kitchen, plus plumber, electrician, plus a joiner to actually install the kitchen. All the prep work is going to take place prior to her getting home in June. So, everything but the actual kitchen install.

She has not even emptied the room in question. There is furniture there, a large side unit filled with dinner sets, glasses etc.

A built in wardrobe has had to be knocked out, make good work on the wall, ceiling, and floor.

She has left our 86 year old dad, who is in a wheelchair, and cant even go up there, in charge.

She has decided the walls are to be painted blue and pink. My dad is aghast, he says it is still my house, Magnolia or cream will have to do! He does not want to send his mate out sourcing the right pink and blue.

And why is she doing this? Her daughter is moving there to study, so needs a decent kitchen. She says she must have the best cooker possible as she loves to bake brownies. My dad is saying no way am I installing cabling for induction tops.

Yes, you have guessed it. My sister is expecting dad to pay for the kitchen. She has said straight out that she is not comfortable with spending money to upgrade a house that is not hers. She can pay the white goods, but nothing else.
I have tried reason with her. I have told her she cannot expect dad to fund this kitchen, just so that her daughter can live there RENT FREE.
But she thinks it is her duty as a grand dad to support her daughter.
My dad is sad and disappointed and feels taken advantage of.

I am angry because she has the money she just does not want to spend her own money. She does not even want to pay for a ticket to go up there and sort it out. It has to start happening NOW, as if they start in June when she gets there, the first couple of weeks of her dds uni might be "disturbed" by building noise. I have said her dd is perfectly able to use the vast library to study and wont have to be inconvenienced.

I am so sick of this navel gazing, how important it is that they are not inconvenienced, and that they save money.

How on earth can I make her see sense, and stop laying problem on my dads doorstep, quite literally?

OK if there are benefits to her moving in then why tge opposition? Surely your father's health and wellbeing come before the cost of an attic kitchen?

op ring your sister and tell her that the builders will be arriving at her house on Monday. Tell her to oversee the work and give the workman access to the ground floor as they will be digging to a sublevel to put in that swimming pool you want, ready for when you arrive in September. Also remind her that the builders will want part payment upfront so she need to give them her bank details.

Some thing tells me she wont agree, why? Its not your house to make that decision, You cant tell her how to spend her money and on what for and for your sole benefit. Even if you are her sister. maybe the penny will drop??

Your dad has to stand his ground, its his house, his money and his dd is taking more than the piss. My guess is your lovely ds will want £5 more from his estate because is was her idea to put the kitchen in...

Nip this in the bud now.

Would your Dad agree to Power of Attorney so you can have direct input.
Two strokes make it hard for him to make clear his lack of support here.
How about a stair lift paid for by rent from sis?
Yes Skype is cheaper and she will see your face to maybe get the baking is not interesting.
Such self involvement is wrong but at present you have no power to stop her.
If she gets builders involved let them know Father wont be paying. A contract with someone who does not own the house is not really possible.
He should state his limits on house improvements and you help him stick to it.
"No!That wont be possible" should be his answer to her orders/requests.

When my d nephew moved in my mum's flat he brought unsavoury friends in so I put a stop to it. They still think I am an ogre. So think about what could go wrong as well.

just seen cross post. I still don't think your sister gets to make her demands. Either it is suitable for her dd to live their or its not. How old is this girl..? Im thinking that she will be out and about most of the time? It sounds too big a responsibility for her to me.

Dad will agree to power of attorney. I have been handling his affairs for years, and have full access to his accounts. But we have also spoken about the family lawyer taking on that role.

We have had the stairs assessed for stair lift in the past, and it is not possible to install one. The steps are too steep and narrow, and there is a door (to the disputed bedroom/kitchen) right at the top so the mechanism would block access to the room) He has a lift from the first floor balcony and down, as his access to and from the house.

She will be 19 1/2 when she moves there. She is a reasonable girl. Loves mountains, trekking, nature. Will study Biology and environmental issues. She is careful with alcohol, and generally very sweet and kind. Religious.

Ikea do little kitchenettes for about 700 quid. Does student daughter really want to bake, or is mum projecting?

1. It sounds as though the house is actually two flats, so a kitchen upstairs will be an improvement, will make it more sellable (when the time comes, so is a worthwhile investment. Splitting the cost, with your father paying, therefore makes sense.

1. The niece clearly can't stay with the current set-up, so putting in the kitchen makes sense.

1. Your father sounds very old: having him oversee the work sounds genuinely tricky, and needs to be addressed.

1. I'm worried that you are all in denial about your niece staying with your father. She's going to be a student, not a nurse, or a "paid companion" (as they so often have in Agatha Christie novels and Victorian tales). If you lot can't manage to negotiate roles vis a vis a kitchen conversion, this arrangement is guaranteed to go pear-shaped. You might all want to consider that.

1. You're over-involved. Let them sort it out. Unless you want to intervene with the overseeing of the renovation. Which you clearly don't, or you would have offered. So my advice would be to take a major step back.

1. Your father sounds as though he is quite "rigid". Some people are born this way, most people get more and more like this as they get older. This is part of the issue and needs to be dealt with (by all of them) as an actual fact. It's going to affect everything.

1. The baking stuff is almost certainly neither here nor there. She probably just doesn't want to talk to you about this. Personally, I would take the hint. And just shrug when your father starts and say: "Well, I'm willing to listen, daddy, but you need to be aware that sister doesn't want to discuss this with me, so ultimately, you are going to have to talk to her about it. Not me. But feel free to vent at/off-load on me, if you like, darling."

1. To repeat: It all has a vast "S.E.P." field around it, as far as you are concerned. Though it must be hard to see that when you are being vented at, and are related to all of them.

thecat - good breakdown.

As for 4, I think my sister has her head in the sand the most, regards to this. Dad the least, as he says he trust NO young person living on his/her own to be sensible, quiet, or dutiful. I am somewhere in the middle.

Maybe the way forward is a tenancy agreement where it is agreed that niece does XYZ in lieu of rent. OR that dad pays for kitchen, and niece pays rent plus XYZ.

It is just so good to get some input and all of you are so helpful in sorting my thoughts regards to this.

The middle's a nightmare place to be , Quint: sympathy.

Re "Good break-down" - I'm in the middle of a somewhat similar family situation myself. Two years on, I've finally realised that, actually, it's time they left me out of it and dealt with it themselves.

... or, perhaps, that I realised that I don't have to be in the middle ...

Still: good luck to you. It's very clear you care about all of them.

It sounds as though your Dad actually doesn't want her staying with him at all, because she is a 'young person'.

He's being very realistic. And i don't think it's fair on her to be stifled like this. This is her time to let her hair down regardless of her religious and ecological intentions.

My mum has someone living downstairs and therefore privacy in her own home but has spare rooms for people to stay as well. It works well for her as she doesn't want anyone 'looking after' her. She is also 86, she has neighbours and family popping in as and when, people take her out for walks etc. If anyone moved in with her to 'look after' her all those visits would stop. Everyone thinks they are really 'helping out'. She also has a cleaner who helps her shift beds around or whatever project she thinks of. We go round and change lightbulbs / fix plugs. She goes out every day and does her own shopping. If anyone else did this for her she would grind to a halt and it would be the end of her.

Once we let her lead the way everything fell into place. As protective and dutiful daughters we tend to make more fuss than is actually necessary. As soon as you let go they work out what they really want. I assume your father is adjusting to the loss of your mother? It's tough when you need money and you see a parent rattling around in an empty property but in the end they can only do what they can do and if that means keeping everything the same as it always was, so be it. I personally think it's selfish and I would do everything I could to downsize and release money for my children and grandchildren - perhaps your sister thinks so as well, but you just have to accept it.