| Episode 1 - Wood Family |
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 Thursday 8 April Well, I wrote my first blog update a few days ago, but somehow didn't save it and it is lost. In any case, it is now redundant as things have moved on somewhat since then. This week has seen a frenzy of activity, including installation of the kitchen, carpets in the bedrooms, alarm system, finishing off some painting, putting in light fittings, replacing or fixing some doors, removal of a six cubic metre skip full of rubbish, measuring up for fly screens and security door, and Michelle running around buying furniture like I'm Donald Trump. We've also had our belongings delivered from storage today so the place is taking on the look of a home as every hour goes by. After months of hard work, sometimes weeks on end with little visible progress, the last few weeks have been amazing. We set ourselves a deadline by booking the floors to be polished on the Thursday before Easter. Come what may, I had to finish by then. I was on a mission for the last few weeks, but got there in the end. A couple of weeks earlier, the house still looked a wreck - the old crappy carpet covered with dust and chunks of concrete, wood, etc were still there, the walls looked better, but had yet to see paint, and the place still had this weird slightly spicy smell of mould, dust, and god knows how many years of neglect and confined living. I could see the change that was about to take place, but Michelle was stressing that we didn't have a hope of finishing in time. Then I pulled the carpet up and started painting. The transformation has been exciting to watch, from the moment the first undercoat hit the walls, dispensed with the odour and gave a hint of what the place would look like. Michelle started to believe. It was full on - I was painting the interior, finishing electrical wiring (legally, supervised by my electrician friend) and a hundred smaller jobs, the outside was being rendered and painted by contractors. Then we were done, just, in time for the floors to be polished. We had a skip delivered and I had some easy work planned for the six days we had to stay out of the house. One of these was making some skirting to trim around the soon-to-be-installed kitchen. I bent over to pick up a tape measure and TWANG - I couldn't stand up. Apparently a bulging disc in my back. So I spent three or four days completely out of action and those jobs didn't get done. All I could think, however, was thank heavens it didn't happen a fortnight earlier! I'm OK now, and trying to catch up to our already tight schedule, but whatever happens we will move in this week. I often feel like the bloke in the Colourbond ad - staring at his house in his undies. I've usually got pants on, but I do find myself just looking at the place with a sense of satisfaction. Today, I keep walking into the kitchen and thinking "This is f.....n fantastic!". Michelle hasn't been here for a few days and her response when she came home from work today was priceless - I wish it was caught on camera - she was beaming. We still have a huge amount of work to do in the next forty eight hours, but we will get there. As to my personal reflections on the project, perhaps the best summary is I found myself saying to someone today I think this is the best thing Michelle and I have ever done. It has drawn us together and made us work well together as a team, despite living separately and having limited opportunity to communicate over kids that were sometimes struggling with the dislocation or desperate for attention. Each of us has faced our own very different challenges with a common goal in mind. For me, now that it is almost over, I feel invigorated by facing up to a challenge that I was ill-equipped to undertake, and seeing it through. We often talk of 'challenges' in the workplace, but by the time you have been doing something for 20 years, these are not really challenges, just another reason to work 12 or more hours a day. A challenge is something you can fail at. A challenge is something that can hurt you. A challenge is something that forces you to draw on and test the limits of who you are. I can tell you, I have stood amongst the rubble of this place, sweaty, dusty, lonely, insecure, angry, tired, sore and utterly sick of it. I never wished we didn't undertake the project, but I did wonder about the wisdom of it. I thought "I could be in a nice clean suit discussing some inane problem over coffee and earning twice as much as I would have to pay some other poor bastard to do this shit." But that's where the challenge comes in. Seeing it through. And then the personal reward of knowing I did it, and its done right, to the very best of my ability. It has reminded me of the stimulation of life before mortgages, kids, etc when life was all about getting the most out of it and forever pushing boundaries. It has reminded me that is how I want to live my life. I will return to my 'normal' life very soon. But I will do it with renewed vigour, energy and confidence in myself. Would I do it again? Ahhh. No. Not any time soon! Grant |
