10 Things I Have Learnt So Far While Renovating

1. Dust won't kill you. But if you endeavour to remove it from every surface every day, it might make you kill yourself.
2. Your neighbours, who seem lovely on the face of it, are sneaky conniving bastards who will chuck stuff in your skip in the dead of night.
3. Stuff being chucked in your skip in the dead of night makes a BIG NOISE and will scare the shite out of you the first hundred or so times.
4. People who have used builders will not believe you when you tell them how great your builder is. This is because they have been endlessly ripped off by trades people and refuse to believe that anyone could have had a different experience.
5. People love to take what you consider flash and exciting and shit all over it. "A good, basic kitchen" (that you've just spent the equivalent of six month's salary on) or "Huh, green paint. I see" or referring to the whole job as "Your little renovation"
6. These people are wankers and should be punched in the goolies forthwith.
7. It is impossible to just tear off a little bit of wallpaper. That shit is instantly addictive.
8. You can live without about 90% of the shit you have in your house.
9. The 10% you can't live without will be packed in an unlabelled box and is probably under a teetering pile of the other 90%.
10. Everything will take longer than you expect... except your money running out.