It’s hard to believe the progress we’ve made in the past month since the arrival of our home. It’s been non-stop trying to keep up with the coordination of trades and we’ve had lots of visitors too coming for the first peak. We’re getting to know the spaces, observing the light at various times of the day and appreciating the views from the panoramic and picture windows.
Since we now have a ‘house’ to work with, I’ve also been busy going through the electrical layout plan, making changes to lighting and sockets. I had a great meeting with our electrical contractor Ollie Mullins, where we walked through each room and reviewed the lighting and the practical points of where to locate the MCB box, locations for switches, isolators and stepdown boxes for LED lights. It was really useful to learn from his expertise. Artificial Lighting has to work as hard as daylight to create atmosphere for the various modes of living, especially in Ireland where we have long dark winters in Ireland.
I’ve been doing the same walk through with the kitchen, I used Iarlaith’s jumbo chalk to mark out the island and the cupboards on the floor and have been going through the various scenarios of making breakfast and dinner. I’m sure to the onlooker, it seems slightly demented, but I’ve actually made some good amendments, which will improve the design.
In so many ways, building a house is like looking after a newborn, we had the initial euphoria of the arrival, then the reality of bringing it home and looking after it 24/7 sinks in. The arrival of the house has brought immediacy to all the outstanding decisions. I’ve been putting sanitaryware on the long finger, as I really want to see the spaces before I made the final decision, but this is on my priority list his week. Plumbers will need to know for the first fix.
The windows will go in on Monday, I’m nervous and excited about this next step hoping everything will fit into place. I look forward to opening the big sliders to the outside, and feeling the growing confidence of our plan coming together.
