What a difference a year makes

This time last year I was sitting amongst a wall of packing boxes wondering if we'd ever see the end of them. We had finally moved from our tiny one and a half bedroom lower ground floor flat in central(ish) London to a three bedroom semi in the suburbs, and I couldn't believe how many boxes we'd filled. Our flat must have been a tardis - the removal men just kept taking more and more and more boxes to the lorry and things seemed to appear out of nowhere! We had been renting a storage unit too (I have a complete inability to get rid of anything and have a dreadful habit of buying things "in advance" and "just in case" - how it's come back to bite me, as I have a garage full of toys that I bought for James that he will never be able to use or be interested in. There's something particularly cruel in that) so when they unloaded the last thing at 10pm on the Friday night I could have cried. The house had been left in a state - the kitchen was filthy, all the "fancy" electric sockets and light sockets had been replaced with basic white plastic ones, the garden was unsafe for the children as it was full of brambles and building materials, the doorbell had been removed, and the fitted wardrobes had vanished (I had clocked that they weren't included in the sale on the fixtures and fittings list, but had visited the house two days before we moved when it had been unoccupied for 3 weeks and they were still there so I had lulled myself into a false sense of security that the previous owner would leave them after all. I mean, the clue's in the name "fitted wardrobes" - I still have no idea what she did with them after removing them, or why she removed them in the first place!). The internal decor had left a lot to be desired when we had viewed but stepping back over the threshold the reality of what we had let ourselves in for became apparent. There wasn't one room that could be left untouched.

So here we are a year later and we now have a "home" rather than a shell. We have managed to do the following:

• rewire the house
• strip the floorboards and varnish/stain them
• strip the wallpaper and then plaster and decorate the master bedroom, Bea's room, playroom and lounge, including replacing skirting boards and picture rail and blocking up a serving hatch between the playroom and lounge
• build a virtually fitted wardrobe in the master bedroom
• replace the boiler
• landscape the garden

There's still plenty to be done, notably James' bedroom and the bathroom, and as with the Forth Road Bridge, it feels as though we're going to get to the end of it all and need to start again but at least we've broken the backbone. The garden was our biggest project, and has only just finished - just in time for all this rain! Apparently they removed over 6 skips full of building materials in the first week.... I am looking forward to sitting in my summer house, admiring the beautiful planting and landscaping and planning my Summer Solstice celebration!