Decisions, decisions, decisions...

It's all motoring along - I now have the velux windows in the bedroom and this has made quite a difference to it now starting to look more like a room and less like my nightmares. I've also finally decided on my bathroom design and even made the bold step of purchasing the actual bathroom. Am now a veritable bathroom genius and am also being a proper Virgo, making lists and ticking things off. All going swimmingly until I get to 'tiles' on my list...

It's at this point that I get into a mildly paralysing panic about the possibility of making the wrong decisions and being stuck forever showering next to tiles that I chose whilst in a questionable state of sanity*.

Calm down dear. Really, they're just tiles. Honestly, how wrong could you actually get it?!

* anyone who has done a project like this will know that at some point, you doubt your own sanity for a) doing it and b) living there whilst you're doing it

Crikey

I take back anything I said about living with the mess and the leak and it being stressful. That wasn't stressful and the reason I know this is because yesterday at 7.45am one of my builders slipped and fell from the roof 30ft onto the concrete path in front of the house.
Trying to calm a man who doesn't speak English (I still don't speak Polish) who has clearly at least badly broken a leg but who I'm more worried may have spine/neck/brain injuries, whilst he's making a heart and stomach-wrenching howling pain noise as we wait for an ambulance, is something I really never want to have to do again. Please don't get me wrong, of course it was about a bazillion times worse for him. Of course. But I just felt crap and helpless and well....overwhelmingly guilty. Once the (amazing) ambulance crew arrived (and in amazingly short time too) and got his clothes cut off, neck brace on, morphine in, oxygen on, then stretchered him to the ambulance then hospital, it just hit me how terrible and accident it was and how lucky he was to be alive at all and I just went into shock for a bit.

He's going to be okay. Miraculously really, he's seemingly escaped with a nasty ankle break but no other real damage.

Wroć prędko do zdrowia

An exercise in managing ones own sanity

So the builders have been toiling away for a week now. I don't know whether what they have been doing equates to amazing progress, but it seems to. The roof is off, new steel floor beams in (the right ones too thankfully - at one stage it looked as if there wasn't going to even be 2m head height in the new bedroom due to the wrong size steels being specified by the architect), new bedroom floor joists are down, kitchen roof also off and new bathroom floor joists down. The skip is full and the builders must also be full (I've fed them enough biscuits!)

This morning I encountered Major Problem no2. The first was the issue with the beams (all sorted, will end up with a stepped floor in the eaves storage as a result but this is far more preferable than losing ceiling height). Major Problem no2 was an unfortunate combination of bad weather-proofing and bad weather. It was biblical last night, howling a gale and chucking it down with rain. I had to put ear plugs in because when I got into bed I was convinced that the noise of the wind and rain on the plastic sheeting where the roof used to be, did not bode well and that it was going to end in tears. Then I convinced myself I was being a worrier and so tried to get some kip.

[cut to a shot of me waking up at 6am and even in my half asleep doziness knowing that the loud and frequent dripping I was hearing was not on the correct side of the window]

Yep, the loft was leaking into the bedroom and I was already too late to salvage my curtains and blind (ruined with very dirty water). Managed to avoid it soaking the mattress and so consoled myself that this was bound to happen, no real harm done, all fixable. Then when the builders arrived we hit Major Problem no3...they went into the loft to investigate Major Problem no2 and the loft floor was obviously a lot wetter than they had anticipated...which is the only explanation I can find for a bit of wrong-footing and a new gaping hole in my bedroom ceiling. This time, both the telly (directly underneath the hole) and the carpet are victims.

I'm trying to stay positive but the weather forecast tonight isn't looking pretty and so I think I may be sleeping in my living room.