It’s December and Christmas is looming. I’ve been forgiven for insisting that we bring all our Christmas decorations with us from Cheshire, rather than putting them into storage. That little bit of “home”, represented by paper decorations made in Tarvin Primary School nearly 20 years ago, helped to ease the sadness that, for the first time since we had the children, there was only Clive and I to decorate the tree.
Hugely exciting, however, was the day when we noticed that “Delamere” now appears as a drop-down option on online address look-ups. Our address is official! (Mind you, doesn’t make it any easier to find as we haven’t yet got a sign up!)
At “Delamere” work continues with the first of our major deadlines approaching. The screed for the ground floor is due to go down on 22 December to give it plenty of time to dry out over the Christmas break. So the floor has to be ready, complete with under-floor heating pipework, ahead of this date. With two huge storms and rampant COVID, getting the roof finished has been a real challenge. A job that should have taken 2-3 weeks is well into its 6th. We were assured that the tilers would work on in all weathers but, understandably, they had to call it quits as Storm Arwen took hold with 60+mph gales. We were less sympathetic, however, when – just a few days before Christmas – we find out they have now run out of slates and we’ll have to wait till mid January to finish.
But on the positive side, the windows are all in downstairs; the underfloor heating went in as planned and the interior walls are all ready to start plasterboarding in the new year. Plus we’re now the proud renters of a storage unit by Lands End airport where the new kitchen and utility room units are all waiting. With rumours of shortages on appliances and tiles etc., hiring a container for a few months means we can take early delivery on all the necessities – like our new dishwasher!
And it’s a great place to watch the early morning plane from the Scillies as it lands at the end of the lane!
One of the things we’ve found most frustrating with the build has been the inability to keep everything on schedule. That’s not always been the fault of any one person or supplier but, while we’re not yet at the point where there are critical dependencies, we get very little sense of when exactly the house will be finished. So we’ve decided to call it out and set an end date. On paper, we should be finished by mid March. We have a break clause in our rental agreement that allows us to move out before Easter so we’ve gone for it! Our worldly possessions will be trundling down the A30 on March 25th. And we’ve told all the trades that this is our “drop dead” date. I am not sure that all of them are familiar with the phrase and may well have something else in mind entirely!
Are we right to impose what is still an arbitrary deadline in this way? It may well create a new level of stress for everyone and with COVID still hitting hard, it may not be achievable. But I guess as long as we don’t book the house-warming party just yet, maybe it’s OK?
We’ll be back in 2022 when – at least I can say with NEAR certainty – we will be opening Delamere up for visitors!
14th December 2021
Building 'Delamere' 