Builders, Boxes & Bubblewrap

I've spent the last 12 months dealing with (read: arguing with, yelling at and trying to coordinate the most disorganised of) tradesmen to get this house close to the point of finished. I had a wonderful image in my head. Moving would be fantastic. Finding a new home for all of our things would be exciting and it would just generally be wonderful to be in the new house whether there were still a few boxes around or not. Fast forward to today...the house is finished except for the landscaping, which is about 3 more weeks away, and I've decided if I see another box I may scream.

Life in the new house has been fairly busy as any normal person would have expected mid-move. I have wrapping, packaging tape and boxes shoved in cupboards that should contain more essential things like clothes or food. My car doesn't stand a chance of fitting in the garage because, it too, is full of boxes and other random packaging materials. The house is full of dust and dirt because of the construction in the area. And rather than my image of perfectly manicured lawns and gardens I may as well be living in the middle of a desert surrounded by dirt and dust and an overgrowth of weeds.

When Darryl walked in the door this afternoon I was vacuuming the floor for the fourth time today with a plan of then dusting the outside of the cupboards to get the gyprock dust off them. He went running not long after...I think to avoid a meltdown about dirt that he could clearly see coming. I sat down for a minute admiring the rooms that I have managed to unpack and sort over the last few days and I realised I needed to look at the bigger picture. Just under twelve months ago we were terribly unhappy in a rental property after being in our own home for 4 years. We tossed up our options and signed a contract on a block of land. It was a pile of dirt that I couldn't, in my wildest dreams, have imagined being brand new house...our brand new house.

Since then I've had meltdowns over shades of brown. I've had screaming matches about skirting boards, nightmares about variations of render colours and all sorts of abnormal things. But none of that matters anymore. We're in our own brand new home, our home that we planned together from start to finish. Suddenly the sense of achievement far outweighs the dusty floors, cars stuck outside for another month, useless tradesmen and cupboards full of crap. None of that really matters anymore and all the stress was oh so worth it.