Home again, home again ... Oh My G--

We've been back from England for a week now and it honestly doesn't feel like we've stopped for one moment. So much for the relaxing weekend away!

We're now knee-deep in dust and debris, tools and materials, constantly moving from one room to another to escape the mess.

Having said that, progress had been made before we left. The shuttering was up and concrete poured (three large bags of it) between the kitchen and the bedroom - presumably to stop us sliding down the chimney pipe like firemen and the Monocouche (a kind of rendering) was applied and finished on the outside of the building. It looks pretty impressive - if not just a little odd that its colour is so different to the colour of rest of the building's rendering. However, we have been assured that it will weather in and blend with the rest ... allegedly.

We're really pleased as it means the outside of the house is now watertight and pleasing to the eye - er, compared to the holey mess that revealed itself when we pulled the dead vine off the wall. We're just sorry that we don't have the wherewithal to make the rest of the house look this good. Still, soon come - perhaps.

The house is already been attracting a lot of attention. Firstly is probably the noise of power tools and the fact that it now looks different. I guess the reason is - we think - is that it's been empty for the last eight years and judging by some of the bits that are barely hanging on that have already required some form of temporary repair, this do-over couldn't have come at a better time.

So with only a small amount of work left still to do on the outside, the boys turned their attention on the inside. Out came the drills and hammers, bolsters and brute force as holes began appearing and in some places there were even wires beginning to poke through.


We were on the way :)

Most of you will be aware that possibly the most stressful times in a person's life are job interviews, childbirth, moving and decorating/house renovations - especially when you're living in the place at the time.

Getting used to the somewhat 'pock-marked' finish we currently have in our house is one thing, but what is most stressful is the dust, dirt and general grubbiness.

As we have discovered, cleaning has almost become a thing of the past - well ... to a certain degree. I mean, we clean stuff, but within moments of having done so, a layer of dust descends and presto! You begin wondering whether cleaning was worthwhile at all.

Certainly at the moment, we clean with reservations ... that means we clean, but not nearly as fastidiously as we prior to the arrival of the builders .

So you can imagine our dismay at returning home on Sunday afternoon to be greeted by a house full of stuff that was either covered in polythene, dust and general detritus or both. There were holes in the walls, floors and ceilings for the new wiring.

Don't get me wrong, we were as happy as pigs in poop to be home, but the reality of how much 'poop' we found when we got here made me rethink just how happy we were.

On top of that, we knew that the next morning (a Monday no less), bright and early, the boys would be back to begin work on the front bedroom's conversion to the new office and bathroom.

Oh joy!

Normally when we go on these excursions, we leave a day in between it and whatever we are doing next to kind of re-acclimatise, but this time we didn't have that luxury.

This time, it was up at six-thirty Monday morning frantically moving stuff from the front bedroom to other (hopefully) non-dusty areas of the house (hahahahaha!!); areas that were fast diminishing, if they existed at all. I think in the end, we settled for areas that were less dusty, rather than no dust.

Next, we set about sealing off the bedroom, bathroom and the upstairs to minimise the dust travel as the boys were going to be cutting a hole in the hall wall to put the new office door in, so the dust factor was going to be massive. We were already swimming in the stuff so adding to it wasn't an option in our books.

So having been on the go since six-thirty Friday morning, this was fast passing marathon and heading towards an Iron Man challenge!