Delira and Excira

Well, now, the day has arrived . . . and have all builders, decorators, plumbers, and electricians been banned, like St Patrick chasing the snakes out of Ireland?

View from the stairs

We are . . . almost there. It’s little things—only half the blinds arrived for the two sets of French doors—one for each door, in fact—and the new carpeting for the stairs going up hasn’t yet arrived (although the stairs are still carpeted, thankfully). There’s a light in the new bathroom that needs to be fixed. We haven’t found the perfect small writing desk to go into the new room, and it’s currently borrowing a side table and lamp from another room. There’s a wall in the upstairs sitting room that needs to be repainted. The new walls are still quite bare—Tim and I are planning to take stock of what we have and think about what fits best in the new space.

New room--kitchen through the doors

That’s all. After three months of dust, disruption, and delay, our home is very much ours again, and it is lovely. I must say I am still a bit surprised when I walk downstairs to make a cup of tea and find myself in a gleaming white kitchen with green and cream tiles and a red cappuccino machine. I don’t have to pinch myself—I know it’s real, it’s ours—but I still can’t help but smile. Tim is happy I’m happy. And, oh, he’s happy too; I think we’d both agree it was well worth the effort (and cost). Despite any number of contractors drifting in and out, there was quite a bit we both had to do to keep the house liveable and in order. The Volvo became a moving dumpster; the charity shops in the area proudly display some of our cast-offs. And the mileage we both put on constantly climbing stairs to first move and then re-home all of the glasses, dishes, kitchenware, and even some furniture was enough to burn off all the takeaway food we ate for weeks while the cooker sat forlornly in the middle of the kitchen floor.

In fact we hosted guests this weekend—Tim’s mum, who was attending a party in central London and stayed with us for a few days, and one of his sisters-in-law, visiting from Germany to get some material for her book at a few archives here.

Bliss

On the day before their arrival there was a moment’s dilemma—without blinds for both sets of French doors, the new room would be a bit too exposed (one set faces the lovely new kitchen, the other the garden). We have a second bedroom, previously stuffed to the gills with things from other rooms being refurbished though now delightfully uncluttered, and the sofa bed in the living room often used before the new room came into existence, so we had to make due with those and keep the spare room for the next time.

The new bathroom, however, did see a bit of activity. Tim was the first to shower in the new space—only finished on the day before the company arrived on Thursday. I was third in the queue, and I must say I did enjoy the experience. The water temperature can easily be adjusted to varying degrees of hot, hot, hot (Tim prefers the slightly cooler setting), and it flowed for as long as you stood under the adjustable shower head. 

Bliss, a good hot shower is.

We are still adjusting to the rearrangement of appliances and therefore dishes, pots, spices, and other cooking items in the kitchen. I regularly fumble between three drawers before I find the corkscrew, and Tim is no better, opening at least three cabinet doors before locating the right saucepan. LOL, we’ll get there.

Kitchen with light from the front of the house

Now that it’s done, I barely recall the frustration of having been through it all. There are certain points in the three-month “process” that resonate more than others, like making space on the table to eat breakfast only to find the next day it was occupied with builders’ equipment, which often irked me. Or being without the second toilet for a bit—just a slight inconvenience, but I did miss it now and again.

Enough. It’s done, it’s positively gorgeous, and I am looking forward to our first gathering of friends for a spring fling. Most will remember the downstairs as a bit dark, a bit in need of attention. I can’t even conjure up what the old space looked like; the transformation is so striking, with walls and doors and things in different places, it bears little resemblance of the place that was. And that is most certainly a good thing!

New bathroom, old orchid!

I am certain, too, that a little luck of the Irish saw it all magically come together in time. When I first said “March 17^th” it felt like ages away, and yet the weeks passed and time flew so quickly that I hardly recall February at all.

We haven’t cracked open a bottle of bubbly to celebrate. Perhaps a green beer is in order?

Happy St Patrick’s Day to you all! Oh, and, by the way, the title is, I am told, a Dublin expression for delighted and excited. I haven't checked with my Dublin-born husband, but I can also hear him say it in a bit of an Irish accent!