Building work begins

This is the house. It is actually two flats.

So, today building work finally started on our house. It's 18 months since we first viewed it, 16 months since we got the keys, and 14 months since we moved in to the upper two floors, which still had bare plaster walls and no working bathroom. 

When we bought it as two flats we didn't have planning permission to convert it back into one three-storey house, and no guarantee that we'd get the permission because frankly, Richmond council are utter gits about this sort of thing. (It was, shall we say, a punt.) But two planning applications, a cup of tea with a councillor and just over a year later, we managed to get our permission. The sigh of relief could be heard as far away as Twickenham Stadium.

Since December 2011, we've decorated two bedrooms, a living room and most of the hall. We've reinstated a picture rail and sanded and varnished all the floorboards. But the 150x250cm kitchen on the upper ground floor, which sported a nice line in pastel green woodchip wallpaper and 1960s kitchen units with 'unpredictably'-hinged doors, has remained untouched because there was no point spending any money on it when we hoped to build a new kitchen in the lower ground floor. 

Fred makes a cup of tea, February 2012

Let me tell you more about our kitchen. It is too small for a fridge so the one we scavenged from Freecycle lives under the stairs. There are seven cupboards in which to store all our food, pans, crockery and cleaning stuff. There is no room for a freezer, so we don't have one. There is no room for a washing machine, so it lives in our upstairs bathroom (which doesn't have a bath). When our cooker was condemned in March 2012 we didn't bother buying a new one, and cooked everything on a two-ring electric hob. One of the rings then stopped working and we did all our cooking on the single remaining ring using a slow cooker for backup. 

If you haven't been invited round for dinner lately, that'll be why.

Anyway. The building started today. It is a momentous event. Andy and his crack squad of Polish boys are about to knock a big hole in the floor of the middle storey to put in a new staircase that will re-unite the upper ground floor with its sad and sorry prodigal son of a lower ground floor. It is a naked prodigal son, having had all the plaster and floors stripped out ready to be robed in shiny new walls and a wood-effect porcelain floor (sounds nasty, but actually kind of cool) throughout. There will be underfloor heating. There will be a guest bedroom, a downstairs bathroom, a special cupboard for coats and boots, and even a little laundry room with bifold doors to cover its modesty on days when we have guests. And there will be a kitchen, a splendid, shiny new kitchen that has a working oven and a dishwasher and a fridge and maybe a separate freezer (just because we can!) and an exciting 'breakfast cupboard' which conceals our toaster and coffee machine and a tap that delivers instant boiling water so we have no need for a kettle.

This will be the glorious new kitchen. There is still some work to do.

Yes. This is a momentous event.