Adversity

(Fresh concrete going down.)

It has been a week in which 800 bags of soil, hardcore and cement have gone through our front door.

A week that has seen our new kitchen, which had lately had windows installed, been plastered, and was on the decorating home straight, transformed into a 52 square metre hole in the ground.

A week in which Husband and I have lain awake wheezing and staring at the ceiling in the middle of the night for more hours than we will ever care to look back and remember.

A week that began with shattering news and ended, thankfully, with a ray of hope at the end of the tunnel, or should that be foundations, and the joy of Middle One's birthday.

And also a week in which, in the midst of disaster, there have been positives: friends who have pulled the stops out to pick up the phone, to text and to write, to be supportive, empathetic and kind, and family, in particular my parents, a constant source of support and reassurance on the end of the phone, and most wonderfully of all, Husband. 

Who would have thought that going through a, let's call it 'very eventful', kitchen extension would have done wonders for the old marriage? In adversity, it turns out, we pull together and draw support from one another. Who knew?

It is quite literally one of my worse nightmares to have nothing but a hole in the ground at the back of the house. You know those dreams in which you have to give a speech and then you suddenly realise you're naked? Or when you are desperately trying to get through to someone on the phone and can't? Or when it's your Geography GCSE the next day and you haven't revised? (With me it's always Geography, no idea why. I got a B.) Well, I have one where the back of the house is missing. The builders have come and knocked it all down and gone away. And that pretty much came true, except that they didn't go away, thank God. I kept thinking that they might. Every night after they left I would do a quick audit of their tools and clothes: still there, I would think. Phew.

Here we are now, seven days on from 'that' day, the day we discovered that the concrete floor was no good and had to come up, and since then the builders have dug the whole lot out, down 400 mm into bare soil, carted nearly all of it out the front door, put down a new cement layer with DPM underneath (damp proof membrane, you see I know all the lingo now), built sleeper walls and joists and nearly completed the insulation layer before the marine ply and then underfloor heating go on top, all before the lovely Christof (see previous blog) is due to come back on Wednesday to lay the engineered timber. You see I told them, when we discovered the cock-up, that they had just over a week to sort it all out and if they manage to get it finished by Wednesday, as promised, we will end up only two days behind the original schedule and back on track for Christmas.

So, with reference to my previous blog sign off, I would say that it looks like he can do it, and that he is up to the job… but I'll have to let you know. 

Watch this space.

Love E x

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