My neighbour sent me a photo showing that the building work had started so this evening I went to look for myself. Somehow it all looks smaller than it felt on the plans so I gazed at it a long time, trying to imagine myself into the space.

It especially felt like the internal length of the kitchen (the bit nearest the current house, down the party wall) wouldn't be the 3600mm I requested for six kitchen units. I hadn't brought a tape measure and in any case I wouldn't climb over very newly built wall, so I counted the number of breeze blocks then measured how many phones equalled exactly one block. When I got home I measured the phone and worked out roughly what the current internal dimension is (it'll be smaller when the room is plastered). It's a pretty inaccurate way of calculating but it came to 3450mm. I know there's mortar to add but this evening I sent a Whats App to the group that includes the builder-in-chief, the site foreman and the architect asking them to check. I hoped they'd see it tomorrow morning before starting work. Within a minute I got a thumbs-up from the site foreman. He needs to take a break!