Weeks 4 & 5 have felt like a mixture of slow going and great progress. The steels to support the rear French doors have gone in, and we’ve seen the brickwork go up and the roof structure appear. Given the rainy and very cold weather, work has been somewhat stop and start, but our builders have been fantastic and at the end of week 5 we are actually slightly ahead of the project plan.

It feels like huge progress when you start to see walls going up and get a better sense of what the space will be like once the project is finished.

But the most significant development for us this week is that we’ve moved out. We didn’t really have an option as to whether we stayed in the house while the work was being done, as the adjustment to the internal layout would have been far too disruptive (we are moving the staircase and changing the entire upstairs layout). So we’ve packed up the entire contents of our house, moved it into storage, and moved in with my parents. It’s meaning that I need to take Max a long way each morning for school (and potentially 4 journeys a day if I choose to head back home in between school drop off and pick up), and it’s proving tough for us all so far, with one day having taken us 2 hours to get to school. But we’re one week down and that’s what I’m hanging onto!

With us gone, the builders have made great progress in ripping out the kitchen and bathroom. It’s amazing how seeing the space without a kitchen or bathroom in makes it all suddenly feel like a proper building project (in a good way!). It really feels like we’re taking things back to a blank canvas, and that’s really exciting. I can’t wait to see the two walls come down in the kitchen and get a real sense of the final space.

And we have the start of a roof for the extension too! We’ve opted for Velux windows in both the side return extension and the main dining room part, so it’s exciting to see where those will fit in. I’m hoping that between the Velux windows in the ceiling and the huge French doors at the back, that we’ll manage to bring lots of light into what was a pretty dark space previously.

So that’s a wrap for weeks 4 and 5. Hopefully with my next update we’ll have a roof!