Transforming the ugly house!
I have embarked on a new adventure into a very strange landscape indeed!
‘Offer?’ I said. ‘I’m not living there’. Six months later we had
moved in to an extremely ugly money pit which hubby declared would be fun to
renovate and extend. He works away a lot. I now have the builders in. Every Day! This is like
having the decorators in only it’s 10 times worse. Messier and a whole lot
stressier!
A recipe for disaster!!!
Ingredients
1 hideous house (c1950 with
décor c1970)
1 architect (very hard to find
the right one. Try several but this can be expensive)
Sprinkle of fairies (and their associated fairy debris)
1 obstructive county council planning office (full of special people who are proof that there is no god!)
1 structural engineer (failed/wannabe
architects are best avoided but that’s impossible)
1 building firm (local so that
if it goes pear-shaped you can throw dog poo into the owner’s swimming pool)
1 full builders yard of stuff
Successive skips (not the
bunny hop type)
Limitless cash
Absolutely no bats
Batty woman
Bacon, eggs and Sausages
Tons of coffee
Tons of coffee
Method
Stage 1 - Design
1)
Firstly instruct an architect
2)
When that fails, ask them very
nicely instead
3)
Add cash
4)
Add fairies
5)
Leave to one side for several
months
6)
Discard sloppy mess
7)
Appoint another architect
8)
Leave to one side with any
available fairy debris and a generous sprinkling of cash
9)
Be sure to remove any cubes,
glass, oak and wood cladding from mix
10)
Throw baby out with bath water
11)
Appoint another architect. Add
heat and stir! Watch carefully and continually
to avoid spillage
12)
Draw the bloody plans yourself and give to architect
13)
Inject cash into architect
14)
Remind architect it is not a
footballers house with footballers budget and remove glass and oak from
drawings and hope some house remains
15)
Lose will to live
16)
Withhold cash from architect
17)
Submit half finished drawings
for planning out of desperation
Stage 2 - Planning
1)
Wait
2)
Wait some more
3)
Wait a shit load more
4)
Meet officious planning officer
who arrives unannounced at your home and treads mud all through the house
whilst displaying a builders crack most builders could only dream of
5)
Do not ask her where she gets
her back, sack and crack wax from, or if they charge extra for orange.
6)
Add lots of smiles
7) Add cash (not bribes… yet…
just fees)
8)
Follow all planning officer
instructions, however mental, demeaning or expensive.
9)
Appoint bat woman to carry out
bat survey (friend of planning officer
who cant find meaningful employ with a bat degree)
10)
Don’t ask her if she is related
to the wild woman of Borneo
11)
Add copious amounts of cash
12)
Make bat pie while Bat Woman
isn’t looking (not to be confused with
Bat Man who fights organized crime and evil for the good of mankind. Bat Woman
just sits in the garden at dawn and dusk with some sonar equipment then sends a
massive invoice to tell you that while there is bat activity in the area, none
of them are stupid enough to reside in the ugly house …maybe that’s a whole
story in itself!)
13)
Proceed, bat free
14)
Wait
15)
Wait even longer
16)
Wait some more
17) Rejoice in planning permission subject to bat boxes, oak gables and
shit loads of glass… oh and a weird little architectural cube on the back that
the architect managed to slip in. (don’t dwell
on what else the architect may have slipped in to get planning permission)
18)
Curse architect with voodoo
doll
To be continued…
