Empty Nester Dilemmas

This cold, frosty Xmas holiday weather brings to mind a Christmas break a dozen or so years ago when my wife Judith and I were working towards completion of our self build project. It was decorating time and I’d decided to deploy some DIY “skills”. I seem to remember spending the entire holiday period with roller or brush in hand working like a thing possessed to get the whole house in reasonable order for moving in as the lease on our rented property was shortly to run out.

Finishing off - tricky time in any project. There’s always so much more to do than you’d planned on and everything seems to take an age. We were employing subbies and had inherited a lovely old chippie whose work was pretty good. But he did like to take his time and would not be rushed. Looking back we could easily have employed the men for another month and it probably would have been a good idea. It feels as though you’ll never get to the end of the to-do list. We’d certainly got to the end of our budget, however, and the men had to go. It feels quite lonely when they’re no longer on site. No more warm hearted chirpy banter and the feeling that there’s always someone on hand to fix whatever needs fixing.

We built a 3 storey country cottage of traditional design. Our main plan was to have lots of bedrooms as we had four school age children and above all to build lots of character into our “new-old” house. Judith was not really into new houses, preferring the quirky character of old period properties and had to be convinced about the wisdom of undertaking this project. Many debates between the two of us had taken place about the design and choice of fittings and so forth, some of which were publicly aired at the time in the pages of Homebuilding & Renovating. Anyone who saw these diary pieces may be surprised to know that we’re still together and in fact still living in the house which has turned out to suit us very well.

to be continued