I am well and truly there!

We were told this week that we definitely wont have the fitted kitchen for Christmas, we have lost another couple of rooms that they have had to board up and to top it all off, we have had snow and freezing weather forecast for this weekend.

We have had to bite the bullet and agree to move out for a week so they can do a lot of the really dirty work and try and get a couple of the bedrooms in some sort of state where they can be decorated and moved back into. At the moment we have a lounge, 1 bedroom, 1 bathroom and half a kitchen. We have 2 bedrooms boarded up ready to knock out, the main kitchen & dining room have been demolished, the new loft room is a shell, but is at least dry so is full to the brim with stuff we have had to move around the house and every nook and cranny is filled up with bits that haven’t got room to go anywhere else, my wardrobes are on the landing!

There have not been any particular reasons for the delays. I think it is just inevitable when you're trying to wrestle an early 1900’s into the 21st Century that these things occur.

This week we uncovered an original cast iron stove that had been bricked into a fireplace in the chimney and from there, a bit more worrying that the back of the house was in turn held up by a wooden plinth that was completely rotten. My builders said it could have fallen down at any point, but they assured me they see these things all the time and we feel we have been saved from impending doom. See, I told you I have had enough, im definitely getting more sceptical.

At the moment I reckon we are about half way through the renovation and probably at what must surely be the worst bit. There isn’t actually anything in the house that is finished and very few rooms are actually habitable.

Next week, when we are out, we are hoping that the last of the demolition will take place. They should be able to get the new external walls and roof up and hopefully the windows, so at least, finally, we will be water tight. Then it will be a case of just be finishing the brickwork, fitting the remainder of the windows, putting in the bi-fiold doors, plastering, electrics, heating, putting in the underfloor heating, fitting the bathrooms and ground floor loo, installing the new kitchen & utility room, flooring throughout and decorating!!!!! I say 'just' lightly....

Once that is done we will have to turn our attention to the outside as the garden is completely ruined and looks like a battlefield! It will have to be landscaped, a new patio laid and the driveway given lots of attention!

The light at the end of the tunnel seems very dim and distant at the moment and with Christmas looming I have images in my mind of my builders going off to their nice warm and dry homes for 3 weeks to enjoy time with their families whilst they leave us with tarpaulin flapping around, freezing in our shell of a house.

It is funny when I speak to people about it or when they ask how things are going. I can't help myself but go into a full on rant and you can just see them glaze over and wish they had never asked.. and when I have got it off my chest, they don’t really know what to say and the only comment they can make I guess to try and be positive for me is, ‘it will be worth it in the end’.

I do know that it will be, but I have to say, the end seems a very long way away at the moment.

Thank you, rant over. My wife says I should be more positive, I don’t know what she means, do you?

This article is by Rob at Scott & Stapleton
http://www.leigh-on-sea.com/scott-stapleton.html

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