Renovation Column: Underfloor heating chaos has left me wishing we’d just bought new slippers

With time ticking and tilers on standby it’s been all hands on deck this week to get the floors prepped and ready to go.

Our top building team has been working weekends to get the floors levelled in time and Tony has been working the night shift with his dad to get the underfloor heating down.

We’ve had our very own version of ‘floor is lava’ as we’ve traversed across boards like tightrope walkers trying our best not to fall into the lava-like slop below.

I’m sure when I’m wandering around barefoot and basking in the glory of the underfloor heating it will all feel worthwhile, but at the minute it feels like we’re back in the renovation trenches with the whole of the ground floor now unlivable.

We had been surviving with our living room downstairs, which had been our safe haven since the project began in June. But now a decision to lay underfloor heating in this room (not mine I may add) has meant we have officially been evicted from this cocoon.

Other than washing the pots in the caravan our life now exists only on the top floor.

I feel very much like the old woman who lived in her shoe; only in my nursery rhyme reality I’m a (nearly) middle-aged woman who lives upstairs.

We eat upstairs, we watch TV upstairs and we only enter the building site of downstairs to graft or daydream about what it will look like in the hopefully not too distant future.

There’s something to be said for renovating in the summer, but now that temperatures have plummeted and you can officially see your own breath downstairs, it has also added a brutal element to proceedings.

The kids come home from school and they are instructed to go directly upstairs, do not pass go, do not collect £200. Then it’s tea time on a picnic blanket in Primrose’s room followed by a snuggle and a show in bed because it’s freezing and because we have no TV downstairs anymore.

In many ways this feels like the toughest part of the renovation so far as it has caused the most disruption to our daily routine. And in my renovation naivety I assumed the closer to the finish line you got the easier it would be.

Back at the start of the process going upstairs felt like a break from the chaos but now I’m falling asleep surrounded by TVs, a stag's head from the living room wall and all manner of houseplants; suddenly it feels as if there’s no escape from the madness.

The plus side is that having no downstairs means I’m in bed around 8 pm and catching up on my sleep.

Friends and family have also rallied around, cooking us tea, offering us dust-free spaces to work and even doing a few loads of washing since our washing machine and tumble dryer are stacked in the garage until the underfloor heating is down.

I can't help think that maybe it would have been easier to buy some new slippers?

Keep up to date with all the progress by following @ohgodweboughtavicarage on Instagram.