We had been hoping to rent the house next door but one for the duration of the building work. Unfortunately there was a more appealing option for the landlord: someone who wanted to move in sooner than us and intends to stay for more than the absolute minimum amount of time possible. So we went back to the drawing board and tried to work out the best option.
A kitchen designer we spoke to mentioned the idea of getting a portakabin in the garden for the duration of the project. Neil was very keen on this idea and I was tempted enough to look into it. After a bit of research it seemed quite a lot more complicated (and expensive) than we’d hoped. It seemed that we would need to buy an old static home and hope we could sell it on without making too much of a loss. The likely expense and inconvenience as well as limited options for purchasing in this area meant that we ruled this option out. Living in a static home for four months with a two year old and four year old would definitely have been a challenge but quite possibly the adventure of their lives so far.
We then thought that perhaps we could stay in the house fairly comfortably until late July and move back in early September. With a couple of weeks away on holiday and some weekends away planned, we thought we might be able to stay with friends, family and in local holiday accommodation for this part of the build. But clarification of likely dates against the stages of the process suggested that this was a costly, complicated, stressful plan. And so we returned to the rental market. We regularly get flyers through the door from estate agents asking if we’d like to let our house as they have people looking for property in the area. Until now I had thought that this was just some strange marketing ploy but now I believe them: it turns out that the rental market in this area is very short of property. As our most important rental criteria is staying near the house (so that we can keep an eye on work progressing and so that we stay close to nursery/pre-school/primary school so that the disruption is minimised for the children), we wouldn’t compromise on location but have compromised on the size of the house. The children will be sharing a bedroom and they are very excited about it. Eloise was briefly worried about what would happen if Spencer wakes up during the night but found her own solution: she will sing him a lullaby apparently. This could be the best way to guarantee an uninterrupted night’s sleep (or the worst!).
