Well, it is at this point that the advantages and disadvantages of the perfectionist builder approach began to show. The advantages are that the details have been really well thought out. The disadvantage is that there is no time to actually complete all the beautiful detailing required. There were three days of extreme pain, during which he was oiling floors until 2.30 in the morning. The one I remember best was the point at which the new version of the wood filler was a different colour to the old version of the wood filler and did not quite match. After I’d walked three miles to two different diy stores in pursuit of the same brand of wood filler in a desperate attempt to ensure that it did match. The new, improved variety didn’t set either. So PB set the alarm (an alarm that we share) to 1.30am so that he could get up and oil the floor so it would be dry by the morning s..o…. Well, the “so” in that sentence needs to be delivered with a sharp intake of breath and the compassion of a black mamba that has just had its tail trodden on. So the movers could start moving my furniture in. Onto the newly stripped floor. While PB delivered his son to university.

I will draw a veil over that day. It was a long long day. Which included going back to the old house in the evening and discovering that they had gouged great chunks out of the plaster in the stairwell. This is what happens when you pick the movers with a cheap quote who are available on the day. There are the boxes where I discovered that they thought it was a good plan to mix books in with other things, so the poor dears were resting on their pages with heavy weights upon their spines.

But there are only another ten boxes to unpack. Well, ten of my boxes. There are still all of PB’s to be moved from his house.

And much is forgiven. Well, when it comes to PB, anyway.

I give you… the other side of the wall, as of mid November.

Note the cupboards. With specially large handles so my newly arthritic hands can open them easily.

Note the perfect placing of every item (apart from the cat dishes). Note the shiny shiny shiny eco fridge. (If I opened it, you would see the champagne ready to christen the house.)

I also give you (I feel here we need a short fanfare of trumpets and a large semi-naked man with a conch) the boiler.

Observe how PB has carefully aligned the amazing eco-condensing boiler so that the top edge matches the line where the picture rail is in the old dining room. How the Bertozzi cooker slides into the space created by the opening of the chimney breast. How the old chimney breast has been corbelled back and the arch rebuilt to make it high enough to cook at comfortably. Concealed in the kitchen chimney and totally invisible is an extractor fan. As well as this, there are the carefully chosen screwless matt black nickel sockets (I bet you never believed that there would actually be sockets put on those socket boxes). It was a very nasty shock to me when I realised that the sockets and light switches for the kitchen and dining room were going to cost nearly as much as the fridge. And don’t even mention in my vicinity the cost of cabling and insulation and piping and grommets and screws and pipe holders. I don’t mind paying vast sums of money out of my somewhat limited budget for something that I will look at every day (like incredibly lush sockets that make me feel as if my kitchen has been designed and could be featured in a Cotswold interior magazine) but I rather resent paying even more for things that I’m never going to see. And don’t want to. I can tell you there are metres and metres and metres of ducting and cable buried in that kitchen, and I felt like Scrooge being asked to give Bob Cratchit the national minimum wage with London weighting when I paid for it.

You can also notice (though I’m not really talking about this) that the architrave (or door casing) has not been replaced, that the pipe at the top of the boiler has not been boxed in and painted green. Petty details, mere mothholes in the great tapestry of life. These things will be got round to.

And the final transformation.

From this:

To this:

This was intended as a window seat where people could sit and chat to the cook and admire the view. Or possibly the cook could sit and read a book instead of cooking. There is a radiator behind it so it is warm and pleasurable. These plans have failed. Instead, it has become the perfect cat couch.

Dear reader, you will have noticed that no mention has been made of the cavern that is being turned into stairs. This is a saga that is still in progress. Suggesting that you might want to know more is like tapping Michelangelo on the shoulder and saying how are you getting on with the ceiling then? You must feast your eyes on the Day of Judgement that I have provided and know that there are further delights in the pipeline (The pipeline, in this case, includes sewerage.)