Renovate your house

“For a long time, I tried to live as though the renovation was just background noise and drove myself crazy battling to maintain high standards of cleanliness. Eventually, I lowered the bar radically. Vacuuming was still almost a full-time job, but the house was never going to be tidy, so I stopped trying. Meals became simpler. Laundry was saved until the weekends. We spent more downtime out of the house — beaches, woods, anywhere that reminded us there was a world beyond dust sheets and decisions about socket placement.”

“Also changing things on the fly - I had plans done, but for whatever reasons the designer didn't take elevation changes into account the way she should have and it caused some issues/changes. It was a bit stressful and annoying and we had to make some not-ideal changes to our addition. I was grateful that our GC is experienced and was able to handle what needed to be done with very little loss of time and expense. I also didn't consider how incredibly annoying it is to have people in and around your house every single day for months... I am very much looking forward to having my privacy back again.”

“What I didn’t really account for was the long, uncomfortable middle — nine months of living on site while our four-bed Victorian home in Devon was pulled apart, added onto, and put back together again.”