The peak of chaos

“Only in the shattering can the rebuilding occur.” ― Barbara Marciniak.

In every house renovation, a lot has to be broken on the way to the (hopefully) beautiful end product. We knew that before we started. However, it doesn’t make it much easier to watch the run down place you’ve put everything into get even worse. Indeed with our "undertaker’s" enlarged team of four demolishing things everywhere in more or less every room and debris strewed across the house we did reach a point last week where we both felt ““Stop it, enough! No more breaking!”

Garden: "Enough! I'm full!"

Always good to be able to see between floors.

Chimneys away! (strange useless fact, removing a chimney doesn't require planning permission here)

Tough to explain what is going on here.

We didn’t say exactly those words to the undertaker. But we did sit down with him to discuss how much more breaking there was before the rebuilding, while highlighting some small things we'd like him to look at before moving on to the next stage. For example bricking up some holes; supporting the chimney stacks; and tidying up properly around the electrical chases. He probably was going to do some of these things anyhow, but we wanted to be sure he did all of them and didn’t just stick expanding foam everywhere (the typical shortcut some builders use; and we were spooked by a box of expanding foam sitting in one room ready for “deployment”).

This stuff has its uses and is going to be used by some extent to every builder. But some people like to use it to fill every gap no matter how big!

OK, things are unlikely to collapse because of a few holes or small missing supports, but why take the chance if everything is open already? Blink and it will be too late to do a simple fix as the undertaker will  already covered them, and then we’d be into a long, painful and potentially damaging discussion as we ask him to undo a days’ work of stud wall construction he just built because he hadn’t bricked up behind. Its best just to not take anything for granted, and so to catch and discuss these things early and openly.

Last week was therefore probably the peak of chaos (though there is one more big demolition to do outside). This week, following the small masonry repairs we requested the rebuilding has started inside. It’s going to be a long process but the putting back together is underway.

Wow, something is actually being put in rather than taken out!