Dream homes

I'm very glad we moved into a house a few years' back that needed absolutely nothing doing to it. It had plenty of rooms sensibly laid out, it had an extension, it was structurally sound. We could just move in and relax.

I've read so many horror stories of people who decided to get work done on their house and ran into endless difficulties. Trying to find a builder who wasn't already snowed under with jobs. The price constantly rising. An ongoing shortage of skilled builders and building materials.

At the same the media are always showing us "dream homes" and urging us to refresh our "tired" home by....you've guessed it, getting the builders in! Be careful what you wish for, as they say.

There does seem to be a general fashion these days for "doing up" your home rather than being content with what you already have.

When I was a child, I don't remember anyone in our street re-doing their house. It would have been regarded as pointless extravagance. Our house was cramped but it never occurred to my parents to build an extension. They eventually moved to a larger house when I was 13, and never added an extension to that one either.

I'm not sure my parents even imagined a "dream home". If they did, I suspect it was simply one that was well looked-after. My father was forever repainting one room after another and keeping all the windows clean. That was good enough for him.

Dream homes are fun to read about but for us that's as far as it goes.

Ready to go

One thing Jenny and I have never dared to do is take on a "fixer-upper" (a crumbling old house that needs a lot of work to put it right) and spend the next few years living with constant building work and all the related disturbance.

We were thinking of building an extension onto our previous house, but thought better of it in the end. We thought the complexities of it all would stress us out alarmingly - working out exactly what we wanted done, getting planning permission, finding a good builder, putting up with all the disruption, keeping a close eye on the work in progress, and deciding on all the interior fixtures and fittings.

Now it would probably be out of the question anyway as building costs have rocketed and initial estimates of the cost of building work are being so greatly increased that they become unaffordable. People often run out of money half-way through the project and have to take out extra loans.

One thing that delighted us about our current house was that absolutely nothing needed to be done to it, we could just move into a comfortable home and enjoy it. It had already been extended to create a huge kitchen-diner and extra bedrooms.

As for actually building your own house, nothing would have induced us to do something so daunting. Jenny and I are fans of the "Grand Designs" TV programme, in which people build their own houses and invariably run into all sorts of unforeseen and costly problems along the way. What's remarkable is their resilience and determination to keep going in the face of one crisis after another.

No fixer-uppers for us. Give us a ready-to-go every time.

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So the Queen has died and King Charles takes over. A very simple news item, which for some reason calls for voluminous news coverage. You'd think war had been declared or an earthquake had destroyed London or there'd been a nuclear explosion. Oh well, let's see what Charles makes of the job.

Friction avoided

Jenny and I have always shied away from major renovations to wherever we happen to be living. A bit of updating maybe but no significant structural work like a loft conversion or an extension. Neither of us would have the patience or the stamina to see it through.

It would all have ended in tears, as it sometimes does for other couples. Apparently around 10 per cent of couples who buy what's called a "fixer-upper" and embark on major structural alterations say they almost split up over it, and 7 per cent actually do.

It doesn't surprise me. I can just imagine the endless friction there would have been between Jenny and me over every little detail of the work to be done. We'd have very different visions of what the finished product would look like, and we would rapidly drive each other crazy trying to find some workable compromise.

When we lived in a mansion-block flat in London, we thought of updating the huge kitchen-diner, but then decided to move somewhere else.

We bought a house in south Belfast and considered building an extension on the back, but concluded we simply weren't up to the task (a) of finding a competent, reliable builder and (b) making sure they did exactly what we wanted, to the standard we wanted. We didn't think either of us could handle the huge stress and strain of getting it all done and getting it done properly.

When we were looking for our present house, we were adamant that any desirable building work and updating had already been done and we could just move in and enjoy our new home. No way would we saddle ourselves with a fixer-upper and goodness knows how many months and years of dust, rubble and upheaval as the builders tore the place apart.

We've never regretted our decision. I'm sure it's saved an awful lot of marital discord.