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Monday, October 18, 2010

tales of DIY Dad

For anyone who has entered my humble abode they know well that for the past 10, who am i kidding?!, 10 plus years we have been 'building' the house. Not that i live in some sort of shelter with no roof, the basic house structure is there, walls and a roof are there. 

However around 1996, Dad became engrossed in a programme called Changing Rooms, then came Grand Designs, then Extreme House Makeover, DIY SOS, 60Minute Makeover and so on. The notion to "do it yourself"  with  a bit of MDF pretty much blew his mind. Why call a builder, plumber, carpenter, roofer, when you can just do it? As the years went on, our collection of DIY tapes, books and dvds grew. Along with them so did the holes in our walls, garden, no part of the house was safe.


I think i was in 6th class when i heard we were getting a sun room. The thought of this was quite exciting, we could have a room with another TV, and our friends could come over an play in it. WOW! 
I'm now finished college and my friends still cant come over to play unless we sit quietly in the kitchen:/ I used to write letters to Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen begging him to come to my house and fix it, never knowing where i was meant to send the letters, they were pretty much useless.

Altho it seems the winds have changed or maybe DIY dad's had some sort of epiphany because last month walls were built.... actually stone (concrete?) walls. They're lovely. 
Then after a weekend of working and not being in the house during the day i woke up to a black shadow at the window. Low and behold there is a roof. A ROOF! AFTER 14 YEARS THERE IS A ROOF AND WALLS. 
Now i don't know how likely this sort of progress is in the long run, but it's a bloody miracle that there is what might be a room. 

Long gone is the huge hole that was my back garden. Gone are the days in the summer when all the men of the road would come around in wellys and dig. This 'project' has been much to the amusement of pretty much everyone except the husbands that got to live the dream of "doing it yourself" if only for an hour in my back garden. 
The wives don't have to commiserate with my mom anymore that her garden was taken over by a mad man with a concrete mixer and a wheelbarrow.


It's not like im off to ikea to get a new couch or anything, but there is a glimer of hope.

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