Up she goes! Our own Grand Design.

This afternoon I was lying flat on my back (how else can you lie on your back?) on the roof terrace of our new house. The PVC membrane went on this morning, and it's all clean and smelling like you could get high on it. I was high in a different way, however, looking at the clouds in a blue sky. Having been chilly all day I was shedding layers as though I was in the Med. Then Joe came to join me. We were both lying there, imagining living here.

This is the roof terrace (OK, it's just a flat roof at the moment, but it will be a roof terrace once we've decking and plants out there).

And here it is looking into the house. That hole will be all glass with a door on the right.

Of course I'm going backwards here. Joe had been supplying me with photos all week. Here's the exciting bit arriving - the crane. And there's the scaffolding behind it, put up a couple of days before. I was incredibly disappointed to be missing the crane.

And missing the lorry arriving with the house on it.

Actually this was only half of the house. There was another lorry's worth. It was a giant numbered jigsaw puzzle. And guess what. One vital piece that should have been in the first load was in the second. Tricksiness before the build had even begun.

Behind the first lorry load was a carful of tourists. They'd spotted the house-bearing lorry, recognised what it was from too many viewings of Grand Designs, and come along to watch. Joe says they were practically having a picnic.

And here we go. Bits of the jigsaw up in the air.

There's the sitting room!

At this next stage I was beginning to think Joe was codding me. He'd just bought a child's house-making kit and was putting it together on the lawn outside the kitchen window. But look! There's a real man standing on the scaffolding. Those little boxes are the downstairs loo, a bedroom, the utility room and the pantry. They look too small to be real.

And then I came home from the parents last Thursday evening. I was supposed to be in Shannon by 6.30 but that's when the flight took off. It was delayed for an hour and a half, our intended plane having been struck by lightning on the tarmac in Bristol (not encouraging, not to be dwelt upon). Frustration. But never mind! It was still light enough to visit the site. All those photos hadn't prepared me for the shock of a three-dimensional house. So long looking at 2D plans, and here it was.

This is looking inside from the sitting room to the kitchen. The rooms no longer look improbably small.

This will be our bedroom. Nothing like fresh air for a good night's sleep.

But finally we have a roof, pitched as well as flat, and all that natty red stuff is a fireproof cavity barrier thingy.

Next is the outer block wall and slates on the roof. The views from upstairs are fabulous, and from downstairs nearly as fabulous. Hurray! It's all fabulous!