Rob's Renovation - Part 9 - The long unwinding road

April 3, 2016 by Rob Kahl

Rob's Renovation Part 9 - The Long Unwinding Road

It has been a while since I have given you all an update on my renovations at home and that has been for a variety of reasons. The main one is though, because just after Christmas I got to the point where I was well and truly over it.

The fun of having the builders there had finished, the end of the work seemed an age away and the thickness of the dust on everything had got to a point where you had to step over it to get anywhere.

The guys working on the house could tell where I was and jollily explained to me that everybody eventually got to this stage in a build and I think they were quite enjoying taking the mickey out of me! My reputation for being a miserable old sod has certainly been enhanced and I don’t think that there is a tradesman in the area that would relish the idea of doing any more work at my house.

In the last couple of weeks though, I have to admit that I have definitely turned a corner. It feels like we have come out of hibernation as we are able to expand back into the house. Having been crammed in to a couple of rooms for 8 months, tripping over piles of toys and not really knowing where anything had been stored, it is a revelation to open boxes of stuff that we had completely forgotten we had packed away or even owned.

The quality of the work has been excellent and I can’t recommend the builders we have used enough. Everybody in fact has been fantastic.

Inevitably there have been some problems on the way, but nothing that we haven’t been able to get through and the plumbers, electricians, builders, carpenters, plasterers, kitchen suppliers and fitters, decorators and carpet guys have all been so willing to try and assist and genuinely have tried to keep the upheaval to a minimum.

But that aside, this weekend was the first time that I thought to myself it was all worth it.

We have unsurprisingly and unoriginally gone for the large open plan kitchen family room at the back of the house with a set of bi-folding doors on to the garden (just like everybody else!) but it works. This Sunday we had a couple of our relatives over to the house. The sun was shining so we had all the doors open, I was in the kitchen area making dinner, my wife and rellies were all in the lounge area playing with my daughter, but we were all in the same room and able to interact and feel part of it.

One of the biggest triumphs was being able to sit at our dining room table and have dinner. After 8 months of eating of our laps it was great to be able to sit together as a family and have a meal. There are still plenty of little snagging bits that as you are probably aware by now are driving me mad but we are actually living in our house again finally, it doesn’t belong to the builders.

This article is by Rob at Scott & Stapleton. Tel 471100

To read Rob's previous blogs on the general property market and the story of his renovation please click the link https://www.leigh-on-sea.com/tag/listing/blog/property