Chaos!

We’ve been back in the UK a few months now.  It’s been great moving back to our “other life” and kind of picking up where we left off almost a year ago- part of our aim of our first stint at our Devon base last year was creating a life that we could easily step back into.  We’d been back about ten days and we were chatting over a coffee and patting ourselves on the back for having between us started sea swimming, started clarinet lessons, re-started dinghy racing, joined the local bee keeping association and signed up for some RYA (Royal Yachting Association) training courses!  It really did feel that the effort we invested in building connections last year was paying off early in our return.

We also planned our house renovation ambitions for the coming six months and agreed to install limestone flooring downstairs, and put in a new kitchen and a new bathroom.  It seemed like a moderate and achievable target.

Our little Victorian house was built in the 1850’s and has been a rental for at least the past twenty or so years.  It appears that maintenance has been limited to multiple coats of cream coloured “landlord grade” paint.  There are so many layers I’m sure it’s become structural in some places! So, it shouldn’t have come as a surprise when seemingly simple jobs ballooned as additional issues came up.  For example, we’d planned to put in the new kitchen last year, but soon discovered that a damp issue needed to be sorted first.  Thankfully the electrics weren’t 170 years old, but they needed upgrading too.  And then it made sense to add mechanical ventilation while we had access behind walls and under floors… you get th idea – each simple job soon turned into a fairly complex scheduling exercise!

Our house is pretty small, and with some jobs requiring rooms to be cleared completely, we’ve moved our lives from one room to another several times.  We started calling the kitchen our “kw-orkshop” when our kitchen morphed into a workshop, and later on, when most functions were accommodated in the living room (being the first one to be tiled…), became the “kl-iving-dining-store room”.  There wasn’t much room to sit, but the convenience of being able to reach the fridge, toaster and air fryer whilst maintaining one butt cheek on the couch didn’t escape me.

About a month ago we seemed to be having multiple deliveries most days – building material for upcoming jobs would arrive and be neatly stacked in our kl-iving-dining-store room or occasionally overspilling into our kw-orkshop.  One day I looked out the window and noted with concern a delivery driver handling my next delivery very roughly.  I soon realised that it was actually food for the Asian restaurant at the end of our street, and accepted that other people in our street can have deliveries too.

One delivery was especially interesting.  700 kilograms of limestone flooring was taking longer to unload than expected, with the truck blocking traffic in our narrow street.  An irate passer-by took exception to the delay that was being caused.  What started as a expletive laden rant suddenly escalated when he took it upon himself to grab a hammer from the delivery truck, in what he claimed to be self-defence to the bemusement of the incredibly calm truck driver and the growing crowd of on-lookers, and he then called the police to report the annoyance.  The police turned up quick smart – I guess the mention of hammers being wielded would do that.  Of course, even with the swift response by the boys in blue, the truck had already offloaded and was no longer blocking the road and traffic was flowing again.  And more importantly, the limestone off loaded safely 😊

Thankfully most of the other construction deliveries were without the same level of drama, but there have been a number of other issues we encountered that have made things a little less than plain sailing.  One of the main similarities of the house with the boat is that neither of them were constructed with straight lines. I often joke that the only parallel, perpendicular, or indeed straight lines in our little house are the ones I’ve put in.  It means that tasks like laying stone floor tiles first requires the floor to be levelled, and many custom cuts where the tiles meet the uneven walls.  Everything takes so much longer when trying to accommodate or alleviate the uneven nature Victorian construction.

As is the case on the boat, we have been employing a division of labour with the work to be done.  One of our goals has been to do as much of the work as possible ourselves, which I’ve found immensely satisfying.  As an architect, I’ve built walls, set out tiles, and laid out ventilations systems on tens of projects… but never in real life with my own hands!  While I prepped the ground floor flooring, Helen became increasingly proficient at putting together kitchen units.  We have employed the skills of master trades for plumbing and electricity though and been working through logistics to do our bits before getting them back on the job.  The end is in sight, though still a little way to go.  But the milestones are getting to be more significant.  One such milestone was the plumber installing our shower tray a few days ago.  Whilst I was excited that that allowed me to tile the bathroom floor and build the laundry cupboard, Helen’s just excited that the shower tray’s no longer in the living room!

Slowly but surely, the stack of timber, tiles, plumbing and kitchen goods have found their way to their designated places and the store pile is now just a few items.  The house is finally starting to return to order.  Final connections by the plumber and electrician should be complete next week.  Then we can switch our minds back to the boat for a while before starting to think about future house tasks, of which there are still many. 

The past few months have helped us appreciate that success is never linear. There are always bumps along the way and accepting that fact helps us know that we will get there in the end. The unexpected happens more often than we plan for!  As an example, while taking a break from the renovations a few days back, I managed to get bitten by a dog.  It was only a little nip – a warning, I assume, from an on-edge rescue dog.  The owner was really apologetic, and I felt a little sorry for the dog, looking a bit confused after the event.  I’ve always considered myself an animal lover, which was a major factor in deciding to stop eating them a few years ago (animals in general not just dogs!).  The whole event left me a bit shaken and questioning my faith in dog-manity. In reality, it is another example of not taking anything for granted – but getting bitten by one dog won’t stop my love of dogs.  Being challenged, mentally and physically by the house renovations won’t stop us taking on more in the future.  Maybe we will be a little bit wiser about biting off more that we can chew.

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