DEAR VIRGINIA

The builder said it was a simple job to put insulation into the walls of two bedrooms. Problem was I hadn’t realised it meant removing everything from the bedrooms. We don’t have a double garage, a woolshed, a tractor shed, or even a rumpus room to store stuff in. A friend said she’d help me with the clothes: she just piled them, hangers and all, in a mountain on the couch. We boxed the books and created a box-tower sculpture in the lounge. It was a health and safety risk and made it hard to see the TV, but as the couch was full of clothes there wasn’t anywhere to sit and watch TV anyway. While the builders worked, I made a few little island sanctuaries of clean calmness: on the kitchen bench, around my computer and on the bedside table.

It was a constant meet-and-greet of tradesmen over the threshold. An electrician had to shut off the power in the walls, a heat pump team had to remove the heat pump. The sarking revealed 300mm horizontal boards of hand-sawn kauri. I now know the cottage is built like a battleship; that is how buildings were built in the 1880s. No power tools and glue guns then. But, oh, the snow of old plaster that fell everywhere. “It’s mixed with horsehair,” said the builder.

The electrician and the heat pump people returned to reconnect everything, then there they were: two new walls in need of a plasterer. I found one having his lunchtime snooze in his van when my grandson Tane and I walked to kindy. I woke him by knocking on his windscreen.

After he’d finished plastering I wanted my house back and foolishly decided to paint the walls myself. Even more foolishly, I told Tane he could choose the colour for his wall. Tane chose bright orange. Sunglasses will be needed.

All this chaos, and expense, for two small walls. How do people endure major renovations?