Our Building Work: Just When I Thought I Was Out, They Pull Me Back In!

The skip is back.

Just when I thought we would be heading into the decorating phase of the loft conversion, we discovered that an element (felting, I believe) had been missed from our new roof and it needed installing.

Rachel had paid for it and Space Invaders agreed it should have been done (I think there was possibly some miscommunication between the various teams working on our project).

This has meant for the last week, a large swathe of the roof tiles at the front of the house had to come off again, so materials could be laid underneath and new tiles fitted on top.

It was a different team of jolly roofers this time round, which, thankfully, meant no ridiculously early (neighbour-bating) noisy starts.

Having completed about three-quarters of the work, they then got called away to another urgent job for a couple of days, but returned on Friday to finish everything off.

But all this extra work has meant we've had to have a new skip delivered and our front garden once again resembles a builders' yard.

While this excitement was going on, Terry - our exterior painting expert - undercoated, then painted, the new gable end of the house, but you still can't really see it at the moment because of the scaffolding.

However, with Terry's work done and the roofers' job complete, let's hope the scaffolding can come down soon.

Meanwhile, indoors, now that Jason's decorating of the top floor is done, this has allowed Rachel's dad to come in (when he's available) to design, and build, the shelving and rails that Rachel envisioned for the walk-in wardrobe.

The shelves, now with a couple of coats of paint on them

The first roller blind has gone up in the loft room as well

This coming week, the carpet fitters are due in to do the complete top floor and the lounge on the ground floor.

What I'd originally thought would be an unstressful job has now - possibly compounded by the return of the workers on the roof - been giving me sleepless nights as I fret about having to unplug and move out all the electrical entertainment devices (namely the SkyQ box and my Blu-Ray players) in the lounge (which are, currently, exactly as I want them to be).

As my old counsellor would say: I'm catastrophising the situation, picturing worse case scenarios as the only possible outcome, and drowning out the soft, little voice at the back of my mind that's saying: "It doesn't matter, everything will be returned to how it was."

All being well, now I'm not having to get up early for any construction teams turning up on site, I can get some lie-ins, recoup lost sleep, and rebalance my frazzled brain.