Work on the house has continued this week and, as you might expect, stress levels have been ever-so-slightly increased. The problem is that the house is only a certain size, possessing a certain amount of space and where storage and room to move is limited. When two rooms are out of action and one of them still has to provide for the needs of 13 people, it can get a little challenging, to say the least!
This is how the kitchen looked by the end of last weekend…
Not too bad, you might think. There were boxes packed up, taking residence on the kitchen floor and being shunted from one part to another depending on where we needed to get to. I have realised that it is nigh on impossible to stub your toe and not curse.
Much as I am embarrassed to admit how chaotic and disorganised our kitchen looks at the moment, I’ll show you anyway…
The little ones didn’t mind the boxes. In fact, they made a great indoor playground for them. It seemed as much fun for them to climb the boxes as it did for them to see how long it would take me to chase them off.
Every.
Single.
Time.
If we thought the kitchen was in a bad way last weekend, things were about to get a whole lot worse. This weekend was the time for more units to come out – including the kitchen sink…
There it goes!
And soon the rest followed…
By the end of Saturday the room looked like this…
Yep, you’re impressed at how much pap and mess there is, aren’t you?
Meanwhile, this was going on in the bathroom. Sean, our family friend and builder extra-ordinaire had been working hard all week and was doing a spectacular job. Seriously, if anyone needs a job done, call this guy. He’s brilliant!
Luckily for us (!), the clean-up team were up and working at 6am on Sunday. How fortunate are we to have them to do the messy jobs we don’t want to do?
I keep telling myself it will all be worth it. I have told myself it so often that the mantra even falls in line with the rhythm of the nervous twitch I have involuntarily developed but that wasn’t the end of it. Sunday brought about an extra surprise for me when, as I attempted to help move a solid wood worktop, I managed to pull my back out. I have spent the last 24 hours dosed up on painkillers, barely able to walk or move, unable to bend at all and in absolute agony – not ideal when you have six under-fives to care for.
My sympathetic daughter has spent most of the last 24 hours like this…
Needless to say, I can’t wait for the day this girl experiences childbirth.
