Orna Mulcahy on people we all know
Emer and Dave are having a site meeting at their house, where building work is well into month six, with no sign of the new roof, and the patio doors still stuck somewhere in a container down at the docks (if you can believe the foreman, although even getting hold of him these days, between all the family funerals he's had, is a major achievement).
Now they can't believe what they're seeing. Dave, who is normally such a calm person, is getting that throbbing vein in his temple again. The toilet under the stairs is in at last, but it's in such a way that you couldn't sit on it and close the door at the same time. And in the kitchen you can't open the door properly, the way the radiators have been put in. And they're the wrong rads. There's no sign of the architect - surprise, surprise - but they did catch a glimpse of the foreman roaring off around the corner in his 05 4x4 as they arrived, and there's a whole new team of guys on the job, none of them paying any attention to the plans, which have drifted to the ground behind the Corian peninsula unit, a corner of which is peeking out from the cardboard. God, if it gets damaged they can replace the whole lot. And if that's the new back door, lying on its side in the hall, it can go straight back again, because it's not the one they ordered, and so can the utility room sink, which is supposed to be round, not rectangular. Emer, who has a box file of cuttings from interiors magazines, showing the sort of details she would like to see in her new kitchen extension, can feel a new bout of psoriasis coming on as she spots her Vola taps hanging out of their box, with a dollop of plaster on the mixer.
She bitterly regrets the day they ever took on the builders - and forgot to sign the contract with the penalty clause. As for the architect, he's useless, and she wishes Dave would stop trying to be his best friend. Her own mother has come up with all the good ideas so far, such as the floor-to-ceiling double doors from the hall and the niche in the en-suite shower for the soap, so what are they paying him 8 per cent for? And why does she have to do all the choosing of things? In the past week she's been up north twice, looking at floorboards and shower heads, and now she has the colours to think about. Don't talk to her about tiles. She did eventually get Dave down to TileStyle one lunchtime last week; he wandered over to the sale corner, picked a horrible tile and suggested they put it everywhere. That's what she's up against.
Meanwhile, the kitchen looks smaller every time they visit - and more expensive. You could get a perfectly good house with the money they're paying just to get a slightly bigger dining area. It doesn't help when they go home to Dave's mother's house, where they've been living out of a suitcase, to be asked how the Taj Mahal is coming on.