Motherhood doesn’t always happen in the way you’d imagine. An important life lesson I’ve learned from my own unexpected experience.

At the beginning it all seemed so simple, natural and uncomplicated. If I was certain about anything in my life, it was that I wanted to be a mum. I still remember my excitement as Matt and I decided to actually start trying for a baby, something I’d dreamed about right from playing with my dolls as a little girl. In many ways it felt like our baby was ‘conceived’ in that very moment, with the conception of all of our hopes, dreams and expectations for our future, not even thinking that it might not work out in the way that we’d planned.

Operation kitchen continues….

If you missed “Part One” you can read it here.

Week 13–  After leaving the house for two weeks, we returned home from Cornwall and I was excited to see the progress. I’ll be honest, it wasn’t what I had expected.  I think I had thought that we would come back to a complete room with doors, a floor and plastered walls.  Alas, that was not the case!  Half the room had the underfloor heating pipes, the walls had all been knocked out and the fireplace taken away and plaster-boarded to form the new alcove for the cooker.  That was it. Mess and dust everywhere; nowhere near to the nearly-finished room that had been pictured in my mind.

I am saying part one, only because I am assuming that this is destined to be a two (if not three!) part-er.  I know, who would have thought there was that much to say about a kitchen extension, but trust me when I say I could probably go all day (It’s at this point I should probably say that I am surprised I have any friends as we near the end of this project, I must have bored them all to tears with my kitchen chat over these past months). If you missed the first post about our plans for this project, you can find that here.

I feel like we are nearing the final furlong with this project, so with that in mind I thought it was a good time to document what these past few months have been like.  Aside from not having a washing machine, or indeed any water downstairs for the past six weeks, I would say that all in all it’s actually been easier than I thought.  Saying that though, we did tactically plan a two week break in Cornwall when we knew things would be at their worst, so that when we came home it would feel like were on the home straight to completion.  I know everyone says this, but the only thing that I have really struggled with during this entire project is the dust and mess the work creates. I tried to keep things clean at first, and then gave up about six weeks in as the dust and dirt would come back in pretty much instantly after I cleaned. Sometimes you just have to admit defeat and wait for the worst to pass!

It’s here, it’s actually imminent, and I cannot quite believe it.  When we moved into this house at the end 2014, I was certain we would have a new kitchen extension within a couple of years. Then, what with one thing and other; namely pregnancy, birth, death and re-building our lives, it’s never quite taken shape.  We had originally planned to start last spring, but with me knee-deep in writing a book and having to do that from home, well it didn’t seem like the best project to throw into the mix. So we saved and juggled our finances a little more until we could afford to pull off the changes we have really been dreaming of; and I cannot wait to tell you what they are.