I’ve been wending my way towards this point for four years or so. Saving the pennies, appointing and working with an architect, discussing plans, going through the Planning process, getting approval from Building Control, navigating the Party Wall Act, choosing a builder, and most recently installing a new hot water system in readiness (thanks Dad for that bit!)

Although all these tasks have been steps on the journey towards our loft conversion, I’ve never really believed that it will actually happen. I know that sounds weird, but I guess it’s at least partly due to the fact that however stressful the journey up until now has been, I know in my heart that the real stress is yet to come. And of course the best way to deal with impending doom is bury my head as far in the sand as possible.

Sand or not, here we are. The loft is cleared out ready; the materials are ordered; scaffolding is going up in a couple of weeks and it is *just* possible that we could move into the new room at the beginning of the summer holidays. I’ve even got a vague colour scheme in my head and have started spending a lot of time on Pinterest in search of ideas I can nick inspiration….though I know from the bitter experience of friends who’ve had loft conversions that this might be a little premature.

You’d think I’d be excited to have the end in sight, after all this preparation and planning. But I’m not. Mostly, I just feel sick. How can I project manage something like this on my own?  What if the house falls down or something really awful happens? How am I going to keep everyone on an even keel when things go wrong? How am I going to hold everything together for everyone when we can’t move for dust and boxes? How am I going to deal with the Husband’s stress levels, already stratospheric before we have even begun? How on earth did I think that I could manage all this on top of everything else?

My lovely friend Lottie who blogs at The Secret Divorcee wrote a post last week about the ‘pinch points’ we encounter in life. In it she says :

‘Things are a bit shit. But the glory of getting old is experience; I know that this melancholy won’t last forever. I’ve been here before, and the knots eventually untangle, revealing a simpler, happier time.  I’m lucky enough to recognise that, although the day-to-day me is on the floor at the moment, there are some good things going on too…’

I’m also getting old, and usually I’m not too bad at waiting for the knots to untangle. But right now, I’m at the very pointiest end of the pinch and I’m finding it hard to see past everything that could go wrong in the next few months. I’m sure that as Lottie says a simpler, happier time will reveal itself. I just have to batten down the hatches and wait.

Wish me luck.

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