We're at an unsettling stage - for me anyway - in our renovation. I've endured seeing my house torn apart and looking like a construction site; I've learnt to work around numerous males in my house when I like my privacy; I've coped with preparing meals in a makeshift kitchen that does my back in; I've survived when the walls came off, the fire couldn't be lit, and the power tripped out on the coldest day in recorded history; and I've even managed to smile throughout most of it and see it as an adventure.
But now that we can see the building stage coming to an end I suddenly find myself not coping. The rooms are beginning to look like rooms now and I have an urge to get in and clean up the floors. Ridiculous when there's so much dust and rubbish from the building and the rooms aren't finished yet. It would be pointless anyway. Why vacuum carpet that is only going to be removed in a week or so?
I feel as if I've lost my old home but haven't yet found the new one.
Worse, I feel as if I've lost my ability to make a home. I feel stressed at the thought of having to prepare meals for more than our immediate three - although I've done it successfully when required since the building started. I feel that no room is "ours" anymore - that every room is compromised in some way from the renovation either because additional furniture has been moved into that room or it has to function in another capacity or just because we can no longer use it the way we have done in the past.
We've also lost the sense of space that we had when the house was first opened up. No longer can we walk through the wardrobe in the spare room to get to the laundry or back entrance. We look at what will be our dining room and are concerned that it's going to be too small (it won't be but at this stage looks are deceiving). We worry that we've made a mistake and should have sacrificed the spare bedroom for a kitchen and had a larger living area (I suspect that once we can open the doors to our living room that this area will seem larger than it does at present - but we can't do that until the building is completed).
I think too that I've lost sight of the end result. I can't see past the mess, the inconvenience, the fact that there's still more to do. For some reason it now all seems like too much: too much to do (although we're over half way), too much to cope with, too much to have to make decisions about.
I feel like it's going to be like this forever.
At least one member of the family has adjusted to the new layout!
But now that we can see the building stage coming to an end I suddenly find myself not coping. The rooms are beginning to look like rooms now and I have an urge to get in and clean up the floors. Ridiculous when there's so much dust and rubbish from the building and the rooms aren't finished yet. It would be pointless anyway. Why vacuum carpet that is only going to be removed in a week or so?
I feel as if I've lost my old home but haven't yet found the new one.
Worse, I feel as if I've lost my ability to make a home. I feel stressed at the thought of having to prepare meals for more than our immediate three - although I've done it successfully when required since the building started. I feel that no room is "ours" anymore - that every room is compromised in some way from the renovation either because additional furniture has been moved into that room or it has to function in another capacity or just because we can no longer use it the way we have done in the past.
We've also lost the sense of space that we had when the house was first opened up. No longer can we walk through the wardrobe in the spare room to get to the laundry or back entrance. We look at what will be our dining room and are concerned that it's going to be too small (it won't be but at this stage looks are deceiving). We worry that we've made a mistake and should have sacrificed the spare bedroom for a kitchen and had a larger living area (I suspect that once we can open the doors to our living room that this area will seem larger than it does at present - but we can't do that until the building is completed).
I think too that I've lost sight of the end result. I can't see past the mess, the inconvenience, the fact that there's still more to do. For some reason it now all seems like too much: too much to do (although we're over half way), too much to cope with, too much to have to make decisions about.
I feel like it's going to be like this forever.
At least one member of the family has adjusted to the new layout!
Comments
I don't know how I would ever get through a renovation, so I have great sympathy for you. Hopefully everything will wrap up quickly and will stop feeling like too much.