25 SEPTEMBER 2008

Embarking on an ambitious building project such as ours involves keeping the faith. Holding the vision that the finished result will be worth all the chaos and confusion and expense. That the piles of wood and builders’ rubbish outside the kitchen door will one day be a garden full of flourishing fruit and vegetables, flowers and grasses swishing in the breeze. That the elusive electrician will, maybe tomorrow, appear again and wire up the remaining section of the house so that I can see what I am cooking in the evenings, and christen our lovely light-filled shower room. That the open timber framework around our front entrance will very soon be a covered porch for storing boots and beach paraphernalia, with windows that will let the low sun into the interior in winter, and a sedum roof for shade in summer. And that our spare room, currently commandeered for Wilma and the puppies and the source of a throat-catching doggy pong, will soon be reclaimed for visitors.

The puppies have more than doubled in size since their birth three weeks ago. Their eyes have opened and unclouded, and they’re beginning to move around with more accuracy and purpose instead of nosing about like small blind seals. The presence of the puppies – and their relentless growth and progress – is actually a tremendous comfort when I occasionally feel the whole project is getting on top of me and wonder if we have bitten off more than we can chew. They make me sit down and take some time out – either to cuddle one on my lap, or just to sit on the stool next to the whelping box and watch them, huddled in a heap, either asleep on their backs with their legs twitching or clambering over one another in their eagerness to nuzzle up to Wilma for milk. Like babies growing into toddlers and before you know it (like my own sweet girl) starting school, there is the sense that it is all going by so fast – one has to savour, and appreciate and occasionally lose oneself in awe over life and its miraculous momentum forwards.

The builders are back after thoughtfully taking a week off to allow the puppies to settle in and Mary to start school. When I return from the school run, they are already hard at work – Doug and Richard on the front porch, which is already taking great shape – and John installing the bunk beds he has custom-made for Mary. We deliberated long and hard over the windows around the porch – it’s a compromise between maximising light, improving our privacy from passers by, and allowing enough solid wall for the hanging of coats and so on. In the end, there are to be taller windows on either side of the front door, and on the garden side, to frame the view of apple trees and a silver birch, and smaller, higher ones by the corner of the road, where people tend to peer in.

A large opening roof light can be opened in summer to let out the heat, while in winter we can hopefully bring some of the heat generated by the long south-facing windows into the house by opening the internal front door – all designed around what I know about the principles of passive solar gain, so I hope that it will work! The same slate tiles on the floor as those we’ve used around the woodburner should not only look good but also hopefully act as a thermal store in winter, releasing their heat back into the space at night. I’m hoping their irregular grey patterning will also be effective in not showing up dirt.

As for the bunk beds, they are a model of thoughtful design on John’s part, with plenty of space beneath the lower bunk for storage baskets, and the main supports placed along the side rather than at the ends, to lessen their impact in such a small room. Mary absolutely adores them and is sleeping in them already, although the main coat of (inevitably) pink paint has yet to go on.

Meanwhile, Laura the (pink-haired) painter has finished painting the larder and utility room, given the kitchen cupboards and drawers their second coat of paint, and has made a start on the dresser we created on the wall where the two missing train compartments used to be. A few more weeks and we’ll be there…

Right now, though, I’m sitting down to finish one book and organize a launch for another, accompanied by the screeching sawing of timber and the bashing of nails into the porch just over the other side of the wall from my study. I think I’ll pack up for the day and go to the beach and finish it later. When the house is quiet and empty, with Frank in London and Mary tucked up in bed, I often open the back door and look up at the stars, which look so utterly amazing here with no artificial light around to dim their glow. There’s silence except for the sound of the sea and the odd low whinny of a horse in the field. These are the times when I know exactly why we are doing this and why it is all worth it. And when I begin to realize how, actually, I might rather miss having all these people in the house, not to mention the lovely puppies, when eventually they are gone.

For further photographs and details about the background to and progress of this project, and for articles on gardening and greener living and information on my forthcoming books, please visit my website.

An article on the house appears in The Sunday Telegraph ‘Life’ section on Sunday 28 September.