We've Got The Builders In - Again! (Part 1.)

I'm just a wife standing in front of my builder husband asking for my forever home...

You’d think I would know better. Didn’t I realise being married to a builder would probably mean I would have to contend with some walls being knocked down here, a roof being tampered with there?…Yes, yes I was up for that. But please, 31 years into our marriage we are on our 11th home and work on the loft has just begun…

So, as I sit, laptop on knees (the desk is strewn with packing boxes and tape guns) and contemplate the client deadlines that are due, please excuse me if I swear a little. Before I start work, I’m off to make the 10th cup of builders’ brew and shake the sawdust from my hair. Oh, and as I step over the debris from the hole that’s just appeared in my bedroom ceiling as the builders work, stomping, sawing and banging heavily and noisily overhead, I might just stop and reflect at why I’m in this - very dusty - mess again.

Flashback to 1990

22-years-old and not a spec of dust in sight!

The fact my husband, John, aka #StressedHusband and I went to school opposite each other in west London for years, yet met thousands of miles away in the rainforest of Cairns in Australia, made for a wonderfully romantic story. My raucous laugh, deep tan, yellow Walkman atop a wild blonde perm obviously caught his eye. He swam to the edge of the pool, looked up at me and cooly questioned in a broad Essex accent, “You ever been to London, darlin’” and I replied straight-faced, “I’ve lived there 22 years babe.”

After a boisterous round of dunking in the pool and being bomb dived upon by his friends who had witnessed his lame chat up line, I decided I liked the bronzed, gangly man-child from Essex. I asked him to ‘Fozzie me up’ when he got out of the pool. No, that’s not TMI, it’s Aussie slang for buy me a tinnie of Fosters. As it happened, he proceeded to buy me copious Fozzies and we went on to dance on tables singing Meatloaf’s Paradise by the Dashboard Light. We spent the next 16 days together visiting Sydney and Perth, dancing, drinking, exploring Aus, laughing and falling in love.

The morning after we met…dark glasses needed.

He’s got a lovely bunch of coconuts!

Back in Blighty as our tans faded, our love grew stronger and I couldn’t wait to introduce my John John to everyone I knew. We were inseparable and so happy. The fact that he would turn up to the Cosmopolitan Magazine office and wait outside for me to finish work in his Hornchurch Builders van - made me love him that little bit more. I didn’t want an uber trendy boyfriend in fashion or photography like many of my colleagues, I wanted a boy with hardworking, rough hands and the ability to out- DIY anyone I knew.

10 years later, a marriage, 2 babies and one about to pop

We were on our 4th house move. My Braxton Hicks were going into overdrive as I held my huge bump and used my shoulder to heave open the door, pushing through the pile of papers and letters that blocked the entrance. We trod carefully over dead mice and down the nicotine stained hallway, ducking the light fittings that hung like skinny tenticles from the ceiling. When I wrinkled my nose and blurted, “Yuck! What’s that awful smell?” John turned to me, his face shining euphorically and replied breezily- “Oh, it’s nothing - just a little bit of damp. Easily sorted.”

And just like that it began again…

Funnily enough, with three children under 6 - one a newborn - I wasn’t that fazed about the work we had to do to make this house liveable. After all, this one would be our forever home…wouldn’t it?

Cut to five years later as we packed up the kids and moved a couple of miles down the road.

The ‘forever home’ which had turned from a pumpkin to a palace (well, it was to me - I mean, the mice were no longer there and we’d built a beautiful loft room and kitchen extension) was lovely, but… parking in the street was awful. Now that John’s building business was doing well, we could afford to move to our dream area in west London - a short walk away from the river and close to our children’s school.

My sporadic freelance writing was going ok but as I got busier with the merry-go-round of school mum life I felt fortunate to be able to take my foot off the career pedal and spend some time with the children. Not forgetting, there was, as usual, the job of overseeing the builders to contend with and the building work in this bigger house swallowed up money quicker than we could earn it. It was one big money munching monster!

The good news was that house prices were soaring in the area we lived in and so, five years later, when John decided it would be a financially savvy decision to use the equity we’d built up with the money muncher to invest in a building project to flip, while we rented, I agreed. Why not? I was actually excited about the prospect of buying and doing-up properties - as long as while doing so, we could rent a home in the same area, albeit a less lovely house than the one we’d just left.

Homes Under The Hammer and a problem with planning…

Buying a property in auction is thrilling - and petrifying - all at once! The desire to keep raising your hand to bid upwards of what you can afford is overwhelming. Luckily, the gavel came down on our final bid and just within our budget for the flat we had our eyes on. We were elated and I was happy that we were renting a nice house, the kids were near their schools and any building work that would be going on, would now be going on in the flat we just bought and not under the roof I was living in.

As we left the auction, the team from the Homes Under the Hammer TV show stopped us to ask whether they would be able to follow our development journey. We were up for that!

It was all going swimmingly - our architect could see no problem with the development plans being approved by the council, the building team were in progress and I enjoyed the fleeting visits to the ‘doer-upper’ as a break from my real mum-life back in the rental. I didn’t have to be too pedantic when it came to finishes and colours in the flat because I wasn’t going to be living there, so all was good…until it wasn’t.

“You might want this?” John looked worried, as he handed me a large glass of wine after the kids had been after-school clubbed, home-worked, showered and tucked in bed. He waited for me to take a huge swig and told me he’d just found out from planning that buying a one bed property in auction with space in the loft to develop, doesn’t mean that the actual space in the loft belongs to you. In the catalogue, the auction listing said, ‘one bed top floor flat with potential to develop into a 2-bed’ - it just missed out the fact that you have to purchase that space in the loft separately to the property purchase if you plan to do any works on it. Oh.

We had to fork out thousands more to get the loft space but the flat sold as soon as it went on the market for a hefty profit. Our foray into TV in Homes Under the Hammer was an added little bonus and it’s an episode still aired occasionally, some 15 years later.

I got the property bug and fell in love with another house.

With one successful development accomplished, our plan was to carry on living in our rented home and continue to buy other properties to do-up and sell. We scoured the auction catalogues and made friends with our local estate agents in the hope they could give us first dibs on any off market properties that could be developed and we got back to regular family life. I must confess that I was secretly lamenting the fact that the Homes Under the Hammer team didn’t see the untapped, raw talent in me and John and ask us to front our own Mr & Mrs Property Developer show (with a catchier title, obvs.) I still think they missed a trick :-)

A few months later, a house around the corner from us came on the market. It was a rare find, in that it hadn’t been touched for years and the owner had priced it reasonably. As soon as I stepped foot in its mildew scented rooms my gut told me that this was for me. I was in love. The thing was, we wouldn’t be able to afford to have this house and continue to buy other properties to develop. If we bought this one - and moved for the 7th time, it would finally be our forever home.

Wouldn’t it?

So strong was our love for this dilapidated home that even my son left World of Warcraft and was happily roped in to helping with the building work (that’s him and his two friends’ legs above.) I couldn’t wait to see this house finished and finally move in to a home that didn’t have doorknobs falling off which meant you got locked in the loo and had to call for help (true story!).

Sweeping away the debris at the end of the day.

We had 2 wonderful years in this house and made many happy family memories including lots of visits from nan and grandad who were living in Spain then, fun street parties with lovely neighbours and, as the kids got older, it became the chosen hub for teen sleepovers (ear plugs required.)

So then, was this actually my forever home? Nope. Various factors resulted in John deciding it was time to leave the successful business he was a partner in and, while building up his new venture, he came across a house, in prime location, opposite the river around the corner from us. It was the ultimate do-er upper, but I wasn’t sure that I wanted to leave the house we were in. The kids loved our current home, the dog loved it and it was the only house we’d lived in that I really felt emotionally attached to.

I sometimes ask myself why I agreed to move again, but I did. And this time we were off to…

The house that good taste forgot: smokey mirrored ceilings, shiny red tiled floors and gold paint everywhere…and very disconcerting dungeon like locks on all the upstairs rooms. Oo-er.

Part Two Coming Soon…