Lessons from a renovation (or six)
From a two bedroom garden flat to a six bedroom house in Italy here are some of the lessons I have learnt in 25 years of renovating.
Renovating is like playing Jenga with jellied eels. Anyone who has done it is familiar with the builder’s cry of: “Where do you want the sockets love?” while standing in a space with an earth floor, no walls and steel poles holding up the ceiling. How, you think furiously, can I decide where I will make my toast when I haven’t even got a roof?
But, if you take the time to plan properly, that is one of the easier questions you will have to answer - finding the right shade of white or blush pink paint is a puzzle of a completely different order.
We (The Mad Husband and I) bought our first flat in 1998. We threw coloured paint at all the walls (years of beige renting will do that to you) added a period fireplace, more storage, tweaked the kitchen and then, when I was eight-and-a-half months pregnant, we redid the bathroom. A project that was scheduled to take a month until the builder turned up on the first day (as opposed to the boss who had quoted for the jo…