Dresser

I think Dr B had a bit of a moan at Carl the builder last night about the rubble inside the house because Carl and one of the lads were on site at 7am this morning cleaning up. Carl's business empire seems to be expanding quickly - I see his signs and vans all over town, though I can't say I'm surprised because from the minute he walked up the drive, his customer service has been fantastic and he's really taken the time to think the job through.

'The thing is with Carl,' says our kitchen designer, 'he's bothered.'

It's a small thing - being 'bothered' - but when a builder isn't 'bothered' about your job then you might as well forget it. You'd think they would all be 'bothered' but they're not, and this is why we chose Carl. He deserves to do well.

This morning I visited a furniture restoration workshop armed with a drawer from our old welsh dresser, which I am hoping they can transform by painting it in Farrow and Ball. I have a theory that you can transform anything by painting it in Farrow and Ball because the colours are so complex.

We've had the dresser for 16 years, though it's been sitting in various garages for the last six of those, or rather the top of the dresser has been in garages - Dr B couldn't accept that pine was unfashionable and insisted that it stayed in the house, so removing the top was some sort of unhappy compromise which came to it's natural conclusion when we had our second child and had to remove the rest of it to the garage in order to make room for some displaced bookshelves.

(Dr B often has difficulty with fashion, which is why I sometimes have to dispose of his clothes to passing rag and bone men - it's for his own good).

Anyway, despite being deeply unfashionable, the dresser has sentimental value, which Dr B would tell you lies in the fact he worked a 48 hour locum shift to pay for it and I would put down to it being one of the first pieces of furniture we bought for our first property, an old Victorian flat in Reading.

The flat was our first 'proper' home and it was located on Alexandra Road, which is how our second daughter acquired her name. It was also the first 'proper' home I'd had since my mother decided I was leaving home at 18. Being kicked out of home is a thoroughly unpleasant and horribly scary experience, particularly the part where you register with a GP and have to describe yourself as 'homeless' - I suspect this is responsible for my obsession with houses and properties and with having a 'roof over my head' ever since (and what a lovely roof we have).

So the dresser has been biding it's time in the garage (and so have the ceramic knobs we bought for it during the last 5 minutes it was fashionable, knobs which have been living in my knicker drawer ever since), but Andy the lathe is going to restore this dresser and paint it up and change the knobs until it's unrecognisable and back in fashion, or at least that's what I'm hoping until Andy picks up the sample drawer and tells me it's actually a 'waxed' dresser and he'll have to get the wax off first - at which point the whites of his eyes display actual pound signs and I feel the coins physically draining from my purse and onto the sawdusty floor.

I'm waiting for a price, though I'm wise to it now. If you want to know what something will cost, think of a number. Then double it.