Esther Chilton

Here’s the next part of my building work diary, telling the tale of when I had a loft conversion a few years ago.

If you missed the story so far, here are the earlier days:

Day One

Day Two

Days Three and Four

Days Five and Six

Days Seven, Eight, Nine, Ten, Eleven and Twelve

Days Thirteen, Fourteen and Fifteen

Day Sixteen

They’re starting to talk about knocking through into the house. I ask them about closing all the doors and using dust sheets.

“Nah, we don’t worry about all that. We like to leave all the doors open and kick dust everywhere!” Clive says with a big grin.

He really ought to do stand up.

Though the smile is wiped from his face later on when he gets a call to go back to his previous job where’s he’s made a mistake. “I don’t wanna go back there. That’s where the lady with the facial hair and everything is. I’ll have to go when I’ve finished here.”

There’s a lot of crashing and banging going on. Walls and ceilings judder and parts of the house start showering down. I’m sure the whole house is going to collapse and I’ll be found days later under a pile of rubble.

Of course, I’m overreacting and the house is still standing once they’ve finished. Just.

Dad comes over to see how things are going. He pretends he’s from the council and here to inspect things. Clive looks scared to death. I have to put him out of his misery and reveal that it’s only my dad.

Clive clearly doesn’t believe me. “You don’t look like your dad.”

As my dad is completely bald and has a tendency to pull faces so that he resembles a wrinkled prune, I’m relieved he’s come to that conclusion.

“Why don’t you take your dad up to the loft and have a look at it now we’ve knocked through?”

“But they’re aren’t any stairs yet,” I say.

“Shame that,” Clive snorts. He’s obviously back to his usual hilarious self.

Day Seventeen

I’m off to Harrogate for a few days for a work event and have to leave before Clive and Stu arrive. I said my goodbyes to them last night as they think they’ll finish today. I also left them with a spare set of keys. I’m not sure I should have done that…

I receive a phone call from a panicked Clive in the afternoon. “Stu’s posted yer keys through yer letterbox cos he thought we were finished, but we ain’t. What we gonna do?”

Luckily my neighbour also has a spare set of keys and comes to the rescue.

Clive sends me a message later to confirm they really have finished. He ends by telling me I was much nicer than ‘that lady with the facial hair’. That’s good to know.

So it’s now over to the team who are going to fit the stairs. In a strange way I’m going to miss Clive and Stu.

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