Extension IV

Yesterday I watched the first episode of Grand Designs that I have been able to watch this year, despite it being probably my fav TV show.  The building of our new extension really has been all consuming for the last 11 months.  The house build has occupied almost every spare moment, made up half of all mine & Neil’s conversations.  It's been exhausting

5th May 2017

With no kitchen for most of the time we ate really badly.  Which is a huge deal for me.  I'm so happy to have my Aga back in place so I can cook again.  Aggie only moved a meter or so, you can see the marks on the wall where she used to be in the picture below.

23rd August

The chickens also disliked the disruption and so stopped laying.  Astrid our oldest, most loved hen, has succumbed to pneumonia, certainly not helped by the stress.  I’ve done the absolute minimum when it comes to bee-keeping.  I’ve done more or less no gardening, so no veggie patch.  There has been a real lack of anything other than house building going on at Ash Cottage.

I don’t think I really understood how hard the build would be.  I’m not anti-social, but having strangers in my house every day was emotionally exhausting.  Especially once we got to the point where I kind of hated all the builders.  The mess and inconvenience was tiring of course.  And the fear of financial ruin when things went wrong, exaggerated but to be expected. The learning curves were steep.  I now know a lot more about wells, tiles, sinks and self-levelling concrete screed than I ever expected to.  And this new knowledge seems unlikely to ever be used again.

That annoying phrase; “It will all be worth it in the end”, though true, is still no great consolation, no matter how much empathy the speaker emphasises.

But it is almost over, we are almost back in our house, I do almost have my life back. I know, that I am very fortunate that my suffering is very “first world suffering”, that my complaints very “first world” problems, but my problems they have been ongoing for months and I am relieved that they are nearly at an end.  And, we have ended up with pretty much what we wanted.

My friend, Charlie, said: 

“You’ve got to realise that you can never get it exactly as you want.  That you are not as in charge as you think you should be, the builders keep telling you they can’t do it how you want it” 

And she was right.  It was good advice, and it made me figure out what I wanted most and pick my fights accordingly.  

23rd July 2017

23rd July 2017

23rd July 2017

Fundamentally we got what we wanted; a well lit, bigger, garden facing family room downstairs.  A bedroom for Louis of equal size to his sister. New bathrooms that feel clean and modern.  A spare room for visiting friends and family.  And thrown in, Neil and I got a new bedroom.  So, now the fight back begins.  It’s down to the finishing touches now, the stuff I thought I would enjoy.  The unpacking and throwing away, the decorating that I have been planning for this long year.  Now the fun begins.