House traumas are traumatic

[bookzombie]

According to the original schedule, the house extension/rebuild should have been finished by now. Alas I feel it is starting remind me of Xeno's Paradox - we keep making progress but we don't seem to be able to cross the finish line.

Some of the delay is due to the re-work of the roof, but that doesn't really completely account for the late-running of the project. I'll have to be honest and admit that, along with all his many good points, I don't think our builder is much of a planner or project manager. I've been asking for a schedule for the second part of the build for a couple of months, but he still hasn't provided it.

Anyway, hopefully we should be able to start using the new kitchen by this time next week, or latest the week after, and the new bedroom shortly after that.

Then we're really off to the races! For all the time it's taken to do the extension, the worse bit is the internal changes to the rest of the house. Not because it's a huge amount of work, but because we're going to have to move things around from one room to another to get them clear enough to work in. Unfortunately that seems to have just got a bit worse: we were expecting to be able to move things from one downstairs room to another (e.g. clear the 'library' room while the new door and windows are being put in there, then put the things that are currently in the living room into the library room when the walls are being moved in there. But now our builder is saying that he was expecting all the rooms to be cleared at once. This is (just about) doable, but it's really going to be a push. We're negotiating whether there's any wiggle-room in this, but whatever happens it's going to be a bit of a nightmare!

We're still repeating to ourselves: 'it will all be worth it in the end. It will all be worth it in the end',...!

Whingeing aside, we've actually managed to keep our spirits up reasonably well most of the time, but after 23 weeks without a proper kitchen and autumn starting to settle in, we're starting to run a bit short of good will now!

Comments

[wild-irises.livejournal.com]

*sympathy*

We did this in 2007, and even though we had a downstairs kitchen to borrow, it was a long hard slog. I think 23 weeks was about what it took us.

[coth.livejournal.com]

We did it in 1997. It took us 5 months for the major work, and another 6 or 7 getting done what we could afford to pay for out of the month's income. My deepest sympathy.

But it is worth it in the end.

[themis1.livejournal.com]

I am so glad we are not actually living in our building site! I think you are very brave to attempt this level of rebuild and still live relatively normal lives. Is it worth considering renting a storage unit for some of the stuff for a few weeks? And is the builder giving you a discount for over-running on his schedule?

[stevie-carroll.livejournal.com]

Ack. One day I shall have to organise works to be done on my house. Nothing on your scale, but I still don't relish the prospect.