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| Construction? What construction? |
If, like Qubit, you are equally at home everywhere (or, to be more precise, equally at home everywhere Talia is) then living in a construction site is no big deal. Likewise if you are Felix or Gid, both of whom have only limited attention to spare for their non-digital living spaces. But for the adults managing things the experience is...trying. There is the hassle of running a household when the house itself is continuously changing around you, the disruption to your work-at-home schedule, and, most annoying, the frequent and not entirely predictable presence of unwelcome construction workers on a Saturday morning. The price of progress, I suppose.
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| Progressive |
And much progress there has been. When we moved back in mid-August the boys had bedrooms and that was about it. Talia and I slept in the barn. Without functioning bathrooms we relied on the public toilets at the nearby Town Hall and showered at the pool. Our kitchen was a camp stove and dorm fridge out behind the garage. There was electricity in a few spots in the house, and some overhead lights, but all of that was turned on or off via a single switch in the excitingly unfinished fuse box.
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| Bath to be |
Since then, almost every day has brought some new element of normal domesticity--another working toilet, a real bed, proper flooring--with it. It took a couple of months, but we now have mostly complete bathrooms, fully functional lighting and electricity, and, as of yesterday, heating. The front doors have been delivered and are nearly ready to be installed, the kitchen is in progress with major appliances scheduled to arrive on Tuesday, and all of the exterior and most of the interior has been given its final coat of paint. Closet doors, window dressing, kitchen countertops, and doorknobs are all needed, and there is much work to do outside the house (a rebuilt pergola, a restored yard, and whatever we are going to do about our disaster of a driveway), but the end is in sight.
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| Early signs of normality |
Are we happy with the results, such as they are? Oh yes. The boys' bathroom, and in particular their shower stall, is great, and ours, nearly done, will be too. The wood finishes are all lovely, not least the domestic hickory that now covers our floors. Our reduced bedroom feels somehow larger than our old one and, to our surprise, accommodates our king bed quite nicely. The house passed through the late-summer heatwaves comfortably even without airco, and we face the winter with confidence thanks to demonstrably excellent insulation and what we trust will be functional gutters.
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| Finalizing exterior paint selections |
More pictures to come in what should be the closing post of this series (part 1, part 2, part 3).
