Obviously we bought it anyway.

Our surveyor used the phrase ‘serious structural issues’ six times. We counted. Then he phoned us to check we had actually read the report.

So obviously we bought the house anyway.

We’ve been wanting to take on a big renovation for a long time. I am that child who moved furniture around my bedroom every few months and tried to redesign the layout of our family home — admittedly with varied levels of success.

We ended up with our previous house on the market just before the first Covid lockdown in 2020 — already in the Cotswolds but needing to move. Our plans coincided with half of west London moving to the area as the idea of space and fresh air became more important than ever, with the addition of being able to work remotely more and more. Brilliant news for people able to do that, but the reality was that houses were flying off the market and prices were rocketing.

Which meant choosing a new plan: looking in a different area (away from family), compromising on what we actually wanted, or taking on something serious. We were both working full time, two children under four, Covid providing uncertainty to pretty much everything – and so, as is now obvious, we chose option three.

This isn’t our first home. We’ve moved a few times before, and thought being ‘pretty handy’ meant we could take on a project like this. Which was incredibly naive, but we have definitely needed that ‘how hard can it be’ attitude, or we would have given up years ago.

It’s fair to say that every estimate we made was wrong. Time, budget, sanity. All of it. Would we do it differently if we’d known? Honestly, I’m not sure. There’s a version of us that would have walked away at the survey, and I can’t decide if that version made the sensible choice or missed something.

We’ve built skills we may never use again – lime plastering being the most niche addition to any CV – and somewhere along the way learned that you really can just keep getting back up. This project has been a lot. It still is. But writing about it here has made it feel slightly less like drowning and more like swimming.

We’re in now. Moved into our home.

It’s a long way from being finished — the barn is still staring at us from across the yard, entirely unstarted and mildly accusatory. Several rooms haven’t been touched. There is no shower.

But we are cooking as a family, building a garden from what is currently a very ambitious field, and finding out what this house feels like when it isn’t just a project.

We’re glad to be back.