Sorry this update has been a long time coming but there always seems to be something more important or pressing to do lately.
Life has always been pretty full on for us since having the kids (Alice in particular) but recently it seems to of stepped up a notch. This is not necessarily a bad thing as its not the barrage of life threatening hospital situations and medical disasters of recent years, but it is becoming apparent that both myself and Greg are spreading ourselves a bit too thin.
Initially I was also going to do an update on Alice in this post but as the weeks have gone on, there is a lot to tell so Ill do that in a separate post shortly and use this one to update on our build and current living situation.
In short we are pretty much over the whole thing. We are over cooked, past our sell by date, done in, had enough, dried out, shriveled up, expired, over it and a million other ways of saying that we really are just a tad fed up with being in The Shit Shack.
Last winter was pretty bad, then summer arrived and made us all realise that freezing our arses off in a damp windy house wasn't nearly as bad as sweating 24/7 and having heat rage all day was. Then just like that we are back into winter and I'm reminded that the floor feels like an ice rink under foot, wind breezes in from just about everywhere and the house always smells like someone very old and very unhygienic lives here. This year, however, we have the added thrill of almost no natural light because, of course, we now have a dirty great two story house just 2 meters from our lounge window, so our cold, damp tomb is now a cold, damp, dark tomb. Which is nice.
Georges bedroom ceiling continues to bubble more and more with each downpour but its so far holding up. His room now has that signature teenage boy whiff about it. Its a kind of damp sock and unclean hair smell mixed with a tinge of savoury food that you cant quite pin down to anything in particular. Not sure how much of that is the fault of The Shit Shack or how much of it just just because he is almost a smelly teenage boy himself.
Alice never sleeps in her room, partly because she's just a pain in the ass and wants to be in our bed but partly because its a damn sight warmer to be in our room and wedged between two parents in a house with no heating or insulation right in the firing line of the sea breeze. And if Im honest, she warms our bed up quite nicely so I'm making the most of it before she's banished to her own room in the new house.
Greg still works from home and his office space is now referred to as "The Gnomery". Its become more like Santas work shop with some IT guy shoved in the corner with a headset on, than a home office. I think he's pretty fed up with his daily conference calls being taken with anything from 50 to 100 gnomes lingering in shot of his camera, but I actually think its quite funny, especially when I hear how often he has to explain to people that he is in temporary accommodation and sharing an office with his wife and not that he lives in a Scandinavian toy shop warehouse. Work space for us both is becoming pretty dire though and if I didn't know any better, some mornings Id swear the damn gnomes had bred in the night.
So the new build, where are we at?
All walls are up, both internal and external, insulation is in the walls and ceilings and both stories have their roofs. All windows and sliding external doors are now glazed and all internal doors went in this week. Everything is plumbed and wired and ready to go. Shelving is going in today in the wardrobes, linen closets, pantry etc and this morning someone was doing something with the down pipe drainage, which until now has just poured onto the mud next to the house. The upstairs is rendered, and the lower level is partially done.
Our understanding is that next is the big things are kitchen, bathrooms and laundry and also light fittings, plug sockets, air con/heating controls and all that type of stuff. God knows if this will take weeks of months. This house seems to either be moving at break neck speed or we don't see a single tradesman for weeks. We just have to cross everything that things will move quickly from here on and that we don't all kill each other in the meantime.
Even Alice now declares daily "this house is too small". Hopefully I can do a full update on her soon.