A Scarlett O'Hara approach to home build

When I was 23 I had a boyfriend who called me Scarlett O'Hara. He said I was rubbish at taking the long view and that my "fiddle dee dee, I'll think about it tomorrow" attitude was silly and frivolous.

It will be a habitable room. It will.

I saw nothing wrong with being silly and frivolous, so I'm pleased to say he didn't last long. But in the last few days his words have been echoing somewhat in my ears, as I realise that we have just five days to go. Five days until we move back in to our house. The house that has no back wall, half the hall floorboards missing, a fridge in the front living room, a kitchen with no cooker, a mahoosive hole under the stairs where the top flat will eventually be connected to the basement flat, and a thick layer of builders' dust covering every. single. surface. 

I could be worried. I could be dreading it. I could be wailing "what the hell were we thinking, starting major building work when I was 32 weeks preggers?". A lot of women might have thought the timings through a little more carefully rather than flinging themselves gung-ho into a noisy, messy, disruptive project just as they were having their second child. 

Scarlett ponders her bathroom tiles

But if I'd thought it through for any length of time I probably wouldn't have agreed to it, and then it'd be longer to wait until we had a decent house. And you know, I think it will be fine. Yes, the house is unfinished. There'll be builders around for another 10 weeks. That's okay. There's no back wall in the basement? They'll build one. They'll replace the floorboards. We've survived without a cooker for 6 months before; we can do it again (all hail the slow cooker). We'll get a cleaner to sort out the dust and grime. We'll keep the mahoosive hole boarded up so it's safe for three-year-old boys who like to run around. And the fridge in the living room? Well it's less distance from sofa to snacks and wine, isn't it?

So yes, maybe my ex was right. Maybe there's something of the O'Hara in me. But frankly, I don't give a damn.

Went to the house as usual this morning. Spoke to Mick the foreman as usual. Mick's a lovely guy, big old lumbering bear with terrible front teeth; I think I've quite won him over with my breezy "hello"s and cheery "can do"s. But I fear that as a tiny child he was not a frequent player of the memory pairs game. Twice now he has asked about the configuration of the tiles in the bathroom, and twice have we clearly explained our wish. Today he asked if we want a third radiator in the living room, because Dom the plumber told him - the first time ten days ago, the second time today - that the two we have aren't sufficient to heat the room. And four times - the first time verbally over two weeks ago, the second verbally last week, the third and fourth in fully typed black and white - we have answered in the affirmative when he's asked "so you're avin wardrobes in the bedroom then are you?" in that airy voice that builders put on when they clearly do not understand why on earth you would want to do something as strange as to require clothes storage.

I came away from the house feeling decidedly less breezy and promptly wrote a REALLY good email to the architect and head builder. If you have ever written a REALLY good email you'll know what I mean - every word was perfectly chosen; action points for the architect were in red and bold; the whole thing was subdivided by category and numbered in order of priority. When I worked at the BBC I'd write one of those emails every couple of months, and for weeks afterwards unfamiliar Radio 4 producers would stop and press coins into my palm in the bustling corridors of Broadcasting House. That's how good those emails were.

Anyway, today was the first day I felt any kind of concern that the house might not actually be habitable by the time we move in in twelve days' time. To be fair to him, Antony "I think ahead" Cook has been having sleepless nights about this for several weeks now, while I'm only just cottoning on. Perhaps our doubts will be unfounded, but the state of the house today can be summed up by the fact our only bathroom consists of a solitary, rather sad looking shower tray plonked on the floorboards. Nothing is finished. Cables hang lazily and without apparent purpose from holes in the ceiling, floorboards grin gap-toothed. It's hard to imagine that anything like a habitable home can be achieved in only seven working days. But the removal van's booked for the 6th, and I'm thinking of keeping the tent and sleeping bags somewhere safe, just in case.