Monday 31 October 2011

I can't quite believe


  • that our building work has started.
  • just how many cups of tea I have made over the past week.
  • that my builder is called Bob (though he does not wear orange checkered shirts).
  • the sight of four girls on Sunday morning climbing on diggers and dumpers in their pyjamas.
  • exactly how our garden looked before this project began.
  • how quickly the holes and trenches appeared.
  • that I am already having to think about where to positon radiators and lights.
  • how long we managed to ponder over whether to reposition a door (and in the end didn't).
  • that every night Bob reconfigured pipes and electric to enable me to use my washing machine.
  • we have another 16 weeks to go (if things run to schedule).

Tuesday 25 October 2011

The calm before the storm

I got up early yesterday morning as I felt too restless to return to sleep. All was quiet and I was able to sit alone in the kitchen sipping my tea and thinking about the project that was about to begin ... 

... building an extension to the back of our home.  Our plan is to turn the old garages attached to the back of the house into an eat-in family area which will be knocked through into the kitchen.  Then the old outhouse will be turned into a study and a room over which there is dispute - dance room for some, home cinema for others and some have suggested a gym (though who would use that I am not sure)!  Above all this we will have 2 new bedrooms and one of our existing bedrooms will be turned into an additional bathroom. This will give Follies 1 and 2 a bedroom of there own whilst Follies 3 and 4 will share a large bedroom.

We have waited 18 months for this project, since moving into our hotchpotch house in the country.  I am certainly keen for work to start, yet I will be sad to no longer see the old and broken brickwork, the exposed rafters of the outhouse and the gaps and holes the reason for which have long been forgotten.  Mr Folly took photographs of the old place as we both know that once the new walls are up with a extra storey and new roof atop we will struggle to remember how our house used to look.

And so after my tea I take a wander amongst the aged building dating from the 1960's in part and the early 1900's in others. I say my goodbyes to the lives lived here before I arrived and prepare to face the onslaught of the day.