In Roath Park View’s last issue, we had just moved back into our house after fifteen months away. We were thrilled to be waking up in our own home again, even if it was borderline uninhabitable for the first few weeks. Now, a few months later, we’re looking forward to our first Christmas in our new home.

For months, we had a portable hob and microwave, the kitchen sink in the downstairs loo and only one working toilet. No washing machine. No usable shower, so despite not having been to the gym for months, our David Lloyd membership finally earned its keep. Nothing makes you appreciate modern civilisation quite like having a toddler and nowhere to wash his clothes. People asked why we didn’t wait until the house was finished before moving back in. But there comes a stage in a renovation when living among the unfinished bits is almost the only way to keep them moving.

Why the last 10% takes forever

The big building work is almost behind us. The remaining jobs are smaller, but far more dependent on different trades lining up at the right time. Take the shirking boards. Our carpenter is working his way through the house, but understandably he doesn’t want to make endless return visits for one room at a time. He can’t finish the skirting boards in the kitchen until the units are completely installed.

The kitchen has a lead time and the fitters have limited availability. Then it arrives with a few pieces missing. Those pieces need to be made and painted to order, which adds weeks. Then you wait for the fitters to have another free day.

Meanwhile, the carpenter is still waiting to finish the skirting boards.

The same thing is happening outside. The garden has been landscaped, the foundations of the outbuilding are in and the roof structure is in place. But the next stage depends on when our bricklayer can give us a clear run to build the garage gables, the garden walls and the main boundary wall.

At this stage, renovating feels less like building and more like sequencing. Every job has another job in front of it and another one waiting behind.

Who can you trust with your house?

Of course, all that co-ordination only works if the people you are relying on actually turn up.

Our original decorator stopped coming part-way through the job and then stopped responding to us entirely. He eventually returned our house key after we sent a formal letter, warning that we would take the matter further, and we are now pursuing the issue through the small claims process.

Finding somebody willing to finish another decorator’s work was harder than I expected. Good tradespeople are understandably cautious about inheriting somebody else’s job, particularly when their name will ultimately be attached to the finished result.

Once others looked properly at ours, it also became clear that some of the work we had assumed was finished would need correcting.

It struck a chord given Andy Burnham’s recent focus on cowboy builders. Years ago, I lost £14,000 to a fraudulent builder who was later jailed, so I perhaps have more reason than most to be wary.

Strangely, though, this renovation has made me appreciate good tradespeople more, not less. Given the scale of the project and the number of people who have worked on it, we have actually been incredibly lucky.

Curtains by Christmas

We have now found a new decorator, and they are booked to start in early November.

It has given the project something it has been missing since we set the date to move home: a point for everybody to work towards. So the next few weeks are something of a race to finish the outstanding jobs so we can get trades out of the house for good.

Once decorated, we can finally bring our remaining furniture out of storage and start doing the very ordinary things that make a house feel like a home.

The milestone I am most looking forward to is probably the least glamorous of all: curtains.

For months, some of our windows have been covered in temporary privacy film and, occasionally, cardboard boxes. The day we can take all of that down, hang proper curtains and close them at night will feel like the moment we can finally draw a line under the tradespeople stage of this renovation.

Looking to Christmas traditions: honestly, if we can just get the house finished by then, I’ll be ecstatic. Christmas itself will be very low-key. We’ll have a tree, of course, and there’s every chance Christmas dinner will be served on a wallpaper table. But just being home will be Christmas present enough for all of us.

We’re refusing to call Christmas a deadline. But Santa, if you’re reading, curtains by Christmas would be a real treat.