Tall Tales from the Building Site

five star hotel in Santiago de Compostela"We have a contract"

We have a contract. And we believe it is worth the paper it is written on. It was signed after Christmas when we had unreasonable expectations that the building works would be completed within the next sixteen weeks or so. Here at D-Day minus four weeks we still nurse unreasonable expectations that we will complete within the ‘or so’ portion of the contract.

Reserver Hotels InterlakenWhy is this so important? Well, we bought a 18^th ruin in Wicklow back in May of last year and intend turning it into a upmarket guesthouse in July of this year. Ambitious? I think so. Foolhardy? I prefer the term optimistic myself. Frazzled? A little!

hôtels HoofddorpFor when we say we bought Raheengraney House, we should say we agreed a price and conditions with the farmer with a view to building throughout the summer - that is, the summer of 1997. It then took five months for the legal process to be completed, largely it must be said as a result of a very pedantic and not terribly fast solicitor on the vendor’s side. We (the farmer and ourselves) met every time there was an apparent problem, sorted it out, and told our respective solicitors. Yet, when the next niggle arose, there would be the same long winded, protracted process where legal conversations were carried out by letter instead of telephone. Oh, the bane of a slow deal!

hôtels MilanWhen at last we could say we were lords of all we surveyed, the ‘all’ in question was not in the best of health. To say it was on the Heritage Council’s At Risk register perhaps explains it best of all. In danger of sinking into the field where it sat, Raheengraney House was like an old lady trailing her coat in the mud.

But I must backtrack yet again. Like Lawrence Stern, I find I cannot write fast enough to reach the present! While we may have theoretically bought the house in May, we distinctly sold our own in June. There was no mistaking it - we packed up and were out by June 27, 1997. Not destitute, just back home again with the parents. Furniture in storage with winter clothes and baby toys and equipment that would not be needed for the next three months. We were ever optimists! However, we settled in nicely. The family joke was we settled in too nicely and did the parents have a lease agreement or a break-out clause? Neither, I’m afraid to say and so are they, for nearly one year later here we are still in the middle of building.

Choosing an architect was easy. We sought recommendations from the Royal Institute of Irish Architects for members in the vicinity. We rang the list and only managed to speak with one. We met him and liked him. We asked for references but did not actually follow them up.

Once we got the past the initial heady rush of architectural plans and ideas there were long troughs of silence as we waited for builders and tradespeople to respond to tenders. It’s then that you realise the difference in calendar appreciation. To us, a week usually means five working days. To a travel agent, it might mean seven days - truncated to six when the punters fly home. To a rector it’s a full round seven days. However, to the construction industry the answer is closer to anything - anything but a week To elicit a definitive quote took an eternity. In the end we called these delays the ‘chain gang’ reaction. For each quote usually required the ‘toing and froing’ of an inordinate number of people and documents. It wasn’t just our long suffering architect who marched to a different beat - so too did everyone else in the building fraternity.

However, we do get on well with our architect. I would say we are at the ten years’ married stage now. The honeymoon was pretty fast, the early years a bit tempestuous and now we have settled into a good working routine. It’s hard work but worth it in the end. Not that we’ve there yet, but we have the confidence of a long term married couple - we know our respective strengths and weaknesses - and we’re still talking!

Finding the builder was harder. We narrowed it down to two companies. And at this stage I must hand all credit to my husband. He sat down with all the figures, set up a spreadsheet and compared and contrasted till it hurt. At the end of this experience we can safely say there is no real logic to costing a building project. Where a partition in one room may cost x, another in an identical room with identical proportions will cost 2x. The old finger in the air trick with a snake oil thrown in for good measure. It took us three months but we rubbed off the snake oil and changed the wind direction a few times before we managed to agree terms.

And as for this ‘or so’ period in which we expect to complete, I should point out that only refers to the building works. There’s also the small job of floors, walls and fittings. But that’s another day’s story. Au revoir!