Renovations

[Faerie]

If a relationship can survive home renovations, it can survive anything.

We have been "renovating" a fixer-upper for the last 18 months and likely for the next 18 as well. The amount of blood, sweat, tears, emotions and foul language that has gone into this utterly foolhardy, impulsive and idiotic "good idea" is immeasurable both in monetary terms and testing of wills. The fucking house just keeps on throwing shit surprises at us and it doesnt help much that the s/o is a planner and Im a do-er, he gets stuck in endless preparations in his head and I phone the tiler and builder to get on with it which pisses him off as he can only manage one thing at a time.

So right now we have a half loft area which houses a temporary main bedroom, a bathroom which is half tiled, a sunroom full of paraphanalia such as cement, bonding liquid, shreds of tiles, screwdrivers, scrapers, tilecutters  and other necessary shit. Downstairs we have wide empty half tiled rooms, no front door because that was bricked up for some fodforsaken reason so we are entering via a side door, paint is peeling off all the walls due to a latent damp issue which we cannot repaint until sorted. The balustrades upstairs have been removed and you need to negotiate your way reallycarefully if you dont want to brain yourself on the half tiled floors 6 feet down in the middle of the night on the way to the loo. Outside we have an eight foot wall deciding when it wants to moer over - we got a steel cable trying to keep it stable until we have money to fix that.

Im going off my effing rocker as nothing can be found when needed and magically appears as soon as you return from the shop buying a replacement. We have gotten used to extra crunchy bits in our food and keeping soap and toothbrushes in plastic packets to keep the dust from forming a lovely paste on it.

We go through moments of intense dislike of each other to admire the almost finished whatever we are busy with thing.  In all honesty, its easier to raise a child than live through renovations.

[brianvds]

I would think it could be fun, if you have the skills to do all the work yourself, rather than having to rely on others. Well, maybe not fun, but probably more profoundly satisfying when the job is finally done.

When I was a kid, my parents decided to get out of the city, so my father bought a small farm in the boondocks. There, he built a house, from scratch, almost entirely with his own hands. The day we moved in we slept under the stars - the roof wasn't up yet. That evening we had half a roof. He kept working on it over the next few years but died before it could be fully completed.

I guess for us kids it was a fun adventure. What my parents went through I don't know. :-)

[Tweefo]

Know the feeling - the kitchen is untiled at the moment. That moment is currently 7 months old 

[BoogieMonster]

When I was a kid of maybe 7-8 years old my parents built an extension onto our house. A lot (but luckily not all) of the work was done by my father. I have vivid memories of stacking piles of bricks during the day to be ready and waiting for him when he got home. He'd build late into the night by lamp-light, with us sometimes carrying bricks, or washing them, or mixing cement...

The only part I really didn't like (aside from not being allowed to play on the sand-pile) was when bricks were delivered and we'd have to cart them off to safety from their delivery spot on the curb before nightfall (and the inevitable theft).

Good luck Faerie. Calloused hands will be long forgotten once it's done.