I may be messy...

...but I'm not disorganised. Yes, 99% of the time the computer desk will have piles of paper all round the keyboard, but 99% of that time I can find exactly what I'm looking for (the 1% being if Anthony has been hurling stuff around).

But at the moment I am both messy and disorganised. I hate it. It makes me itch.

There'd been a strange lumpy bit in our living room floor for a very long time. It wasn't a major problem, we just stuck a chair over it. But then one day I moved the chair and realised that the lumpiness had spread to the wall...

So when Anthony's folks came round the following Sunday bringing a builder with them to look at fixing up the utility room to make it more weatherproof and secure, we got him to have a look at the floor instead.

Turns out that the heating pipes that run the length of that wall had been bodged together by the previous owner, and so one of the joints had been very very slowly leaking.

Just a case of patching that bit of floor and wall, yes?
No.
The area where the pipe had leaked was also where the bodger had pulled up the old hearth area, so none of that area was any good.

So a case of patching the hearth area of floor?
No.
The way the rest of the floor surface was breaking up made the builder suggest that we needed the whole sub-floor ripping up and a new concrete floor laid.

Since this was two weeks before Christmas, and the weekend before my 12 week scan, I was hoping for "we'll get rid of all the loose stuff, then do it properly after Christmas."

Not my decision to make apparently. (Not Anthony's either)

So the work actually started on the day of my 12 week scan. A week and a half's worth of no heating, lots of dust and noise, just when I'd started to be less stressed.

They did the floor in three sections in the end.

Each section was done about three days apart, to allow for the concrete to go off enough so that they could then use that surface when working on the next chunk.

For most of the time I got to keep a couple of bookcases in there. The rest are all out in the conservatory. I get extra itchy when I can't get at my books.

The next decision taken was to get the room redecorated while it was empty. A quote was obtained and a decision taken. (again, not by either of us)

Which is why I spent the week I was supposed to be on holiday with Anthony, staying with my mother while he and his dad decorated.

To be continued...