Bricks and Torture
Sledgehammers smash walls and send my stomach through the floor. Bricks bleed and permeate the air with diaphanous dust that smothers nasal hair. Windows shudder. Floorboards groan. My house is hurting and I feel the trauma. Three months into a renovation and I’m yet to feel the love for this cavernous money pit. The heavens have opened, saturating the exposed site and washing piles of sawdust and grit down the driveway. Amputated architraves scream in silence and dangling cables hold naked bulbs, their filaments long extinguished. It’s agonising to be ‘on site’, surrounded by skirting boards unsheathed, wall plaster ripped asunder and metal roofing peeled back. Hall carpet stripped off like a band aid reveals virgin timber covered in knots. Its rawness is real. I medicate by trying to envisage a new environment. Sprouting north from the 1900-built carapace will be a new heart of the home: an open kitchen with a lifted section of roof and swathes o...