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From
MEDIA: Move or Improve magazine placed on Tue 29-Jan-08 09:56:32
Surviving the builders (or not)
I write for Move or Improve? a magazine that looks at different ways of upgrading your home and at people who have taken on big projects. We want to run a piece about women who have been in charge of renovations or other big building work on their homes and ask how they managed: did they find the builders treated them with less/more respect; how did they fit the demanding site schedule around their family commitments etc? If anyone has any experience of this - is still living in that home - and would like to chat to me, then I would be really interested to hear from you - what motivated you to do it? How the actual experience compared to what you thought it would be like and so on.
You can contact me at angelapertusini@hotmail.com and you can find out a bit more about the magazine at www.moveorimprove.co.uk
I had a loft conversion and kitchen work done when my DD was between about 3 and 9 months old. The builder was marvellous, did masses of extra stuff for me, gave me brilliant advice, cleaned up as best he could every day and generally was the opposite to the stereotype dodgy builder in every way.
Hi! I project managed our house renovation when I was pregnant - I agree with wmmchoc - it was utter utter misery.... We stripped back our house to only brick then extended and re-plumbed, new electrics, new plaster, carpentry etc etc
I had horrendous morning sickness that lasted all day and 9 months so would be liasing with workmen then going to chuck up in the garden (we didn't have any water for a long time as our drains and drainage system had to be replaced).
At 7 months pregnant I was washing in a bucket that the plasterer kindly left me... Luckily a house I rented out became empty so we moved in there for 6 weeks. We finally moved back in to a not quite finished house when I was 8 1/2 months.
The workmen on the whole were great - a couple of troublesome ones - I just treated them like you would an unruly child and didn't give them a moments peace!
I will never, never renovate another house whilst pregnant..never, never, never.
I'll talk to you - I did a major building project on a listed building in a conservation area, while pregnant. It was a farking nightmare. They destroyed the only downstairs toilet when I couldn't walk and therefore get upstairs and I still had morning sickness. The chief builder was an older chappie who thinks women should stay at home and make tea. Listened politely to everything I said and then asked my husband - the twonk! We did ours because we actually couldn't stand the breezeblock bathroom on a 16th century thatched house and we wanted a conservatory so we had room for our daughter when she arrived to play.
The experience was just horrible, yet just recently we embarked on another building project and managed to complete it only a week late and on budget. I was stunned at how well things can work.
My SiL is currently coming to the end of managing her own building project, she lives with my MiL so it's an entirely female household and she's had no end of probs with architects being twonks and wrong bits being delivered. She was quoted six weeks and so far four months
From
MEDIA: Move or Improve magazine placed on Tue 29-Jan-08 09:56:32
