KEY POINTS:
If all goes to plan - and I have to admit, as far as I'm concerned, things very rarely do - this will be the first in a series of columns within a column.
This page could very well become (or not) the equivalent of my own blog but without (hopefully) the social stigma that goes with having one's own blog.
I'm going to call this non-blog of mine Mid-life Renovations because (a) I am (again, hopefully) somewhere in the middle of my life; (b) we're about to start renovating our house; and (c) both a and b fill me with dread right from the top of my head to the soles of my soul; but (d) both are unavoidable no matter how hard I've tried to pretend otherwise.
And, trust me, I've pretended pretty damn hard for way too long, with the end result being that both house and body are falling apart round my ears. Hence the need for the major reno-vations.
I suppose I could shift (house, not body, that is) but really the thought of going through all that fills me with even more dread than the thought of renovations, possibly because it involves real estate agents.
Also, I quite like our house - apart from the fact that it is too small and falling down, of course. So, ignoring the advice of many of our friends, we've started out on the renovation trail.
We've had some concept drawings done, which is, I feel, a jolly good place to start. The thing I like about concept drawings is that they're not real, yet they seem real.
There are bedrooms and bathrooms and living areas galore; the kitchen is where it should be, rather than where it is now; it is like our house, only much, much better.
Unfortunately the very thing about concept drawings that attracts me to them is also, I am beginning to realise, their greatest drawback; which is that they are just drawings. They are like the cartoon version of reality before reality sets in, in the form of that thing called "costings".
As far as I can make out, understanding the concept of "costings" when it comes to renovations is even more complex than trying to understand MMP, rugby's Experimental Law Variations and how John Banks got to be Mayor again, all wrapped up into one - with the added twist being that there is no correct answer. My early encounters with the concept of "costings" is that you think of a number and no matter how big the number is, it will still not be enough.
Of course the major problem with "costings" is that you then have to take the number you've thought of (and based on which the architect has done some more concept drawings that don't look quite as flash as the first set) and go to a bank to get money.
We haven't quite got to this stage yet because we're still at the point where the concept of adding a staggering amount to our mortgage is not so much on a Must-Do list as on a Must-Open-Another-Bottle-of-Wine list. We have, however, started apologising in advance to our children for the crippling debt they will inherit to go along with the crippling debt of their university loans.
Mind you, the whole project could come to a crashing halt this week when the arborist comes round to look at our trees. Trees are apparently quite important when it comes to renovating; possibly more important than humans, I am beginning to learn.
I've already learnt heaps about lots of things I didn't know about before. Like how the council has a spy satellite that takes pictures of your house so it can tell how many trees you have so you can't just whip a few out thinking no one will notice.
I've also learnt that trees have things called driplines which seem to be important for some reason or another. Up until now I thought a dripline was a group of people arranged in something approaching a straight line while doing something spectacularly dumb - like those women who sang the song about John Key at the Labour Party congress. They were definitely a dripline.
Anyway, it may come to pass that Mid-life Renovations is the shortest ever series of columns within a column because the arborist tells us we can't touch a leaf on any of our trees without going to jail, let along chopping down a few of the buggers to make room for a bigger house.
But if not, then a whole new world awaits - one where logic and reason cease to exist, apparently, as we head into the phase known as "consents". Oooh ... I can hardly wait.
