Things get beyond a joke

I'm sure there comes a point in every project when the problems reach such a point that the homeowner (or "victim" as they should better be named) feels ready to throw the book at his builder, tell him enough is enough and go and beg for any other tradesman to turn up and finish the job. Doubtless this is a venture more of hope than expectation - maybe someone whose reputation has been unsullied by the traumas and pains of recent problems and failures can sweep in to your life and fix all those last little tasks that stand between you and your home being returned to you.

That moment has certainly arrived for me and it is a task of great effort (physical and emotional) to restrain myself from ringing Paul, the "builder" and shouting at him and telling him to take his lack of management skills and get off my land.

No, the windows did not arrive. Apparently his manufacturer was let down by the glass supplier. Our frames sit somewhere in Croydon and some glass (whether it is the glass remains unclear) languishes in Perviale. So Paul will now tour London's outer reaches to harvest frames and glass and then assemble them and begin fitting them today.

Apparently, by the end of this week we should have all our upstairs windows fitted and those rooms finished. I will believe this when I see it.

In itself, I could almost find some tragi-comic value out of this tale of painful panes but this is not isolated. I have to put this in the context of the other vital materials that always arrived after they were needed; breeze blocks (twice), wood, cement (poured), cement (dry). And one can now add kitchen units to this as well, it seems.

I started the week with such optimism, the prospect that I would go off to a tedious and intensive 3-day meeting on Monday night, leaving a shell of a house and return on Friday morning to a lovely home with all its rooms ready for occupation, if not full use.

Instead, I face the prospect of yet another week homeless, sharing a bedroom with my sons and a living space with my in-laws (the headful of cold that is also trying to get elbow room doubtless isn't helping my mood).

All that is currently offered to us is the prospect of bedrooms, bathrooms (fitted but unfinished) and the two downstairs rooms as stuffed with the rest of the house as they have been since May.

For reasons I cannot quite fathom progress on the rest of the project has been Methusulean. Having made it clear that we wanted - at the very least - to have access to the kitchen (so that we could get all the boxes of crockery, food and saucepans etc out of the two living rooms), we thought we had an agreement that this room would be plastered and available to us.

As of now, it remains boarded up and largely unplastered, to the extent that the kitchen units - which we had initially discussed being delivered now for fitting this week and next - are not deemed wanted on site until the middle of next week.

Having made it clear that we, at least, wanted to move our sink and old units to the utility and connect our new cooker so that we could have a temporary respite from microwave cooking, this is not being offered to us for another week.

Given the prospect of returning to this grotesque chimera of a house - living room-cum-office-cum-storeroom, plus playroom-cum-kitchen-cum-diningroom and an unplastered hallway with the new cooker sitting in the middle of it, like a beached whale, I vote no. Somehow, Paul the builder thinks we would be leaping at the prospect of returning to this mess and seems intent on walking away from the job for the weekend (doutbless at his usual 3pm because, well it's a Friday and we like to finish early, don't we) presumably with the sound of applause from a grateful household ringing in his ears.

Given the sense of urgency we thought we had imparted, to say I am disappointed is an understatement. Given the promises that were made about the amount of work that would be done, to say I am underwhelmed with the effort visible is also an understament. Having been promised a weekend of work from the plasterers, we returned on Monday to find they had flagrantly lied to avoid working. Having been promised two teams of plasterers shift working to give us over 12 hours a day of activity, every time we visit the house in the evening we find it empty and dark (and unplastered).

Hence, my initial reaction is to ring Paul the builder and shout at him; to make clear my personal feelings regarding the project management skills he was meant to bring to this project (at our great expense); to tell him exactly what I want to see from him and exactly what commitment I want from him. That he can spend his weekend sweating his lungs out, whilst we cry our hearts out; that if we don't get our house back completely and utterly with everything finished within a week he can kiss his money goodbye. But most of all I want to ring him and ask for my children's (rapidly disappearing) summer holiday back, to ask for my life back. To tell him that I can't stand the tension of not knowing when (if?) I will get my house back, my sofa back, my TV back, my time back; to ask him if he understands what aggravation he's causing and tell him to put it right. I want him to know that I'm disappointed that another of his customers is taking him to court over problems on their project but my disappointment is because he's failing us as a result, not because it's an unfair world and it shouldn't happen to him.

Instead, I'm stuck here in this distant, dreary, interminable meeting, festering and pouring my angst out into a webpage whilst the good Doctor and her father plot the demise of Paul the builder.

Death through Project Management sounds apt.

I've heard it said quite frequently that building an extension is a lot less stressful than moving house. Now, I'm not going to pretend for a moment that moving house is a carefree and painless process and is facilitated by good natured professionals whose only thought is to ensure your happiness. Right now though, as we (theoretically) reach the final steps of this project, I can't help but think that I would at least have an estate agent and conveyancer on my side helping me deal with the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. Also, in all probability, I'd have a completion date. These are things I'd kill for right now.