It’s a hoary old saying, that one about the omelette and the eggs, but over the last few weeks I have come to realise that it contains a great deal of truth. It’s one thing in your mind to understand that in order to create something new you first have to take apart what is old. It’s quite another to actually see that happening. I had lived with the plans for Bryn Melyn Apartments for the best part of 18 months. Bryn Melyn had been our home and our guest house business for 8 years and I was used to its shape and its form and all its peculiar little twists and turns. But I had also been part of the process of re-imaging that space, of all the ‘what if?’ questions and the drawing up of new plans. So I could see in my mind what it might all look like in a new incarnation, how the new spaces fitted into the old skin. And of course somewhere in my mind was an understanding that this monumental change wasn’t going to come about by drafting in a handful of decorators and laying some new carpet. We needed to take out bathrooms, move walls, install kitchens, new bathrooms, create new spaces. And then, thanks to building regulations, we were going to have to install a sprinkler system, acoustic insulation and fire-boarding. All of which was going to be messy and dirty and disruptive and challenging to live with. The thing is an understanding, a theoretical grasping, of the implications of a major building project are not the same as actually living through such a project and experiencing the disruption first hand.
Let’s just say I have not particularly enjoyed the last 6 weeks! However, a lot has changed in that time and from the broken eggs the first signs of an omelette are beginning to reveal themselves. We have reached that stage in the build process where things are beginning, slowly, to be put back together again. The biggest change obviously is to the layout of the house. Where doors once opened into rooms are now walls and conversely there are doors where there used to be walls! Most noticeable however are the opened spaces where walls have come down completely to open up spacious new living areas for each apartment. Seeing these take shape has been genuinely exciting and deeply satisfying as it becomes possible to visualise how people might use the space and we are making decisions daily about tiling and flooring and matters of tastes and judgement rather than regulation. It’s a big step towards the final outcome and something of an encouragement to face the disruption that is still to come.
What it does mean, though, is that we are now confident enough about finishing that we have launched the new website, (which you already know because you’ve linked to this article from it!), and we have opened bookings from September 2018 onwards. We expect to be open for business well before then, but we are taking no risks. When our first guests arrive we want everything to be completely finished and perfect so as and when we have a firmer idea of when that will be so then we’ll open up earlier booking opportunities. For now, however, you can book for autumn, winter, or indeed for 2019. And that really does feel like progress!