First au pair- room not ready - how to make welcome

[chandellina]

Hi, seeking advice here. We started converting our loft in May with the plan to have our first au pair in September. The room is almost ready but still needs painting and decorating and other finishing touches.

Because of lack of space and the work still going on we haven't gotten the furniture yet either although can do so quickly. The new bathroom she will share with my daughter is also not done but may be by the time she arrives next week.

Fortunately we have a fairly pleasant guest room that the au pair can use temporarily although the wardrobe is full of stuff and there's not really any storage at all.

What worries me more is that our house is in a total state from the build - every room in the house has holes in the ceilings because of damage from the work above and smoke detectors going in, plus the electrician made about 10-15 extra holes in the ceilings and some room walls while doing his work. Builder says will make it all good but has given zero time frame for doing so.

Meanwhile, our downstairs toilet's macerator fan stopped working and it smells. Our main bathroom is next up for renovation and is all broken tiles, peeling paint, limescale, mouldy grouting etc. Your basic horror show. Oh, we also don't really have a working oven ... long story.

We did tell the au pair her room wouldn't be ready but I'm terrified she's going to run screaming (or at the very least feel a bit depressed about her living conditions), having never been out of her home country before.

Any ideas how to assure her that actually we are a lovely family with a usually nice house? And ideas to make her feel welcomed more generally?

thanks!!

to be clear: we told every candidate that the room wouldn't be ready but that we had a guest room. The electrician holes only happened in the last few days so it wasn't even something I could flag up.

we told every candidate that the room wouldn't be ready but that we had a guest room.

Does she also know about the continuous building work which will be on going whilst she is living with you?

If I was told my room wasn't ready but a guest room would be available I would be expecting to hang clothing etc in that room and to move once my room was complete. I wouldn't expect to find myself in a building site with more work planned.

Our macerator stank the room out. It had a small u tube breather pipe. The water in it went fetid. Fill it with neat bleach - did the trick.

The rest..... get painting, it’s September on Sunday.

So why haven’t you cleared out the guest room? You said earlier the wardrobes were stuffed with other people’s clothes. So, it’s just a spare bed, really. She won’t even be able to unpack
Telling the candidates that their room wasn’t quite ready, but the guest room was available is a bit disingenuous, really. It just sounds as if you’re decorating it specially for them.
You presumably didn’t say the whole house was in disorder with holes in ceilings and stinking of broken toilets. Oh, and the oven hasn’t worked since January.
Come on!

If you’ve told her there’s a guest room there has to be a full guest room available. I.e. somewhere to settle in and unpack. You need to explain about the rest of the house. Unless your house is in a prime London location, your children are angels and your pay is generous Id expect she will leave if you don’t make an effort to sort the house out.

You need to clear out the spare bedroom. Put the stuff in the garage / your bedroom if you have to. Buy grout whitener to hide the mould.

And get painting her room ASAP.

I think you need to make sure everything else is in order - au pairs do not want to arrive to be told they need to sort out and tidy the playroom - everything needs to be organised and neat for her to maintain it.

I'm sure you are lovely - I'd rather be with a caring kind family than one with a perfect house who were mean to me.

Ok working on dual track to get room painted, furniture assembled and meantime clearing out guest room closet so that room is perfect.

And please do a walk around when you video call tonight so she knows what’s in store

OP - as long as you are up front and honest about what she can expect, none of this sounds dreadful to me.

Make some space for her things in the guest room and as long as she can access the family bathroom and there are some cooking facilities I'm not sure what everyone else is so concerned about. Not all of us live in houses with en suites in every room and depending where she's coming from, living facilities and standards can be very different. The point is that she is coming to experience life in another country with your family and the fact you are concerned I am sure means you will be a good host.

The ideal situation would be that you explain and offer to pay for her to move her flight to the end of September.
I always try and start as I mean things to go on and if everything in disarray it's going to be really difficult start off on the right footing.

They're always homesick as well at the start and I think it will make things more difficult, especially if the bathroom's horrific and you don't even have an oven...

Moving away from home as a teen/ early twenties is hard enough in itself and it doesn’t seem like the OP’s home is anywhere near ready. There is not even storage available.

There is no way I would be happy with my dd living in the chaos of a building site.

This isn’t about whether the au pair is “the Queen”, but a simple question of whether it’s reasonable to move someone into the middle of a building site without their knowledge. And no, the answer is, it isn’t.

OP isn't putting her own family up in a fancy hotel while the house gets fixed up. The au pair will have to learn and accept that life does not always go the way we want it. Also, I think OP will learn a lot from her character by how she responds to this minor and short lived disruption

I bet you get your pick of all the best au pairs

I think the guest room sounds fine, as long as you clear the wardrobe - especially as she was warned in advance that the permanent bedroom wouldn't be ready. It's the state of the rest of the house that is more of an issue. If an airBnB is an option, I would at least say that I am happy to move her to one if she finds the house too much.

I think people are over fussing. If you've got a perfectly clean and usable guest room and you're nice people she'll be fine. Perhaps buy a temporary canvas wardrobe for her until her own room is ready.

You could make her feel welcome by going out for a couple of meals as a family with her, asking her to help choose a few bits and bobs for her new room (cushions/throws etc) to make it feel hers.

I was an au pair, some of the places I slept were very basic, but the families were so kind and friendly that's mostly all I remember.

Thanks Honeyroar. For anyone interested in what happened next, our builders patched up all the holes before our au pair arrived. She has been in our very tidy guest room now for around 10 days while the painter finishes the loft and furniture arrives. She's lovely and all is going well so far. :)

Oh sorry, didn't notice I was late to the thread, but glad it's all working well and I hope you'll all stay happy together. (I stayed in touch with my host family I au paired for for over 15 years, they were so nice).