A busy week – When stress accumulates and there’s not much you can do about it

This week will be very busy; in fact it already started this weekend! We had builders over on Saturday to replace all our back windows (kitchen, toilet, bathroom and bedroom) as well as both the front door and the back door. They came in around 10am and weren’t finished until 7.30pm. During that time there were about 6 guys in various rooms in the house, everything was covered in plastic and once again the air was full of dust. They also knocked out the old windows which meant that although they did sweep up afterwards I am still finding bits of glass on the outside walkways. I have told my neighbour to make sure his kids wear shoes for a while as I know they like to play there.

At one point when they pulled out the old wooden door frame (which was rotting a bit) a section of the wall above came down which then needed bracing and fixing. At that point I was exhausted by the noise and dust and I made a hasty retreat to meet a friend for coffee down the road. DH stayed to oversee the work. I am glad he is handling most of the details as my tolerance for stress these days seems minimal (the fact that I had an exam on Monday to prepare for probably didn’t help either).

Sunday we spent cleaning and checking all the details of the windows. I especially love the bedroom window since it seems so much brighter than before and I can now open it to ventilate (before we had glass blocks).

Monday I had the exam, which went passably but not up to my usual high standard. Then in the evening we had to measure up the new partition walls and prepare drawings as well as decide on where exactly to position our new bathroom basin and tap.

Tonight someone is coming to replace the security gates (which were taken down when the new doors were installed) and to put some burglar bars on the bedroom window so I can feel safe when I leave that large window open. The contractor who is re-painting the flat and putting in the partition is also coming over (hence our push to get all the partition drawings done last night). We need to discuss a lot of items with him tonight so I think that will pretty much take up our whole evening.

Tomorrow we have a host of people coming around. Firstly the carpenter needs to put in the second section of the bathroom cabinets. He won’t manage to finish tomorrow (the door panels are still being sprayed) but he can position everything so that the counter top people who are coming in the afternoon can make a proper template (they need 10 days to make the counter top but DH is pushing to have them install it before he’s away. He’s leaving on the 28^th Nov so pretty soon!). Lastly the window people are also coming back to fix up a few minor details they missed on Saturday (we asked for frosted glass in bedroom they gave us clear, the wrong door handles were used etc). Wednesday night we also have a 2.5hr antenatal class (which DH finds too long) and after all that we are usually completely knackered and just grab some take away on the way home.

Our bathroom so far:

Thursday night DH will install the burglar bars on the bedroom window (the guy on Tuesday will do the prep but can’t install yet until the new frosted glass is installed on Wednesday). I will probably spend quite some time packing away (depending on what contractor says tonight I might even have to pack up the kitchen items etc). We will also need to pack for a weekend away.

And so on and so on! I am really looking forward to 5 weeks from now when we will hopefully have our home back with everything done and can spend a more leisurely time unpacking and re-organizing without the constant dust and shifting things about depending on where work needs doing!

At this point in time I have to admit to being quite stressed and not really knowing what I can do about it. As it is DH has already taken most of the coordinating work upon himself and all I really do is pack away stuff (DH has barred me from moving furniture) and mop up floors afterward (which with so much dust in the air you end up doing 5 times as it all settles). I swing between wanting to know what’s going on and being so overwhelmed I just want to forget about it all and get out the house. Every time I am in the house I also think about all the stuff we still need to pack away and my to-do list is getting longer and longer. I worry I will forget something and I dont really know what to do to relax since all I think about then is how I am wasting time and could have packed up some more stuff instead. *sigh*

At least this weekend we are getting away for 2 days (we are going up the coast with some friends) and I am determined to try and not think about the renovations AT ALL!