Malone is kept awake designing her dream kitchen

I finally received the planning permission to move the kitchen into the lounge, thus creating a small but adequate bedroom for my small child. The planning permission took four months to come through.

Now I am wondering if it will take as long to gather builders’ quotes and decide on a worktop/splashback/swing bin.
I’ve become obsessed with the Ikea website. Every spare minute I find I am logging in – well, I am now I’ve remembered my password and I’m not trying to enter it into the US Ikea site (that was a fun few days!).

I’ve spent days designing my new kitchen on the website. I’ve designed so many that the last one I named “Kitchen design-Million” Hopefully it won’t cost a million dollars. For starters, it’ll be priced in pounds as it’s the UK Ikea company (I’m definite about this now after days of trying to log into the wrong one). Also, the whole point of buying from Ikea is that it’s cost effective.

“After five hours in Ikea, I want to run out of the store empty-handed, shouting ‘Im cured!’”

The downside being, one, that it’s miles away from Brighton (I took the train and a tram there last week), and two, that you have to go there at all! Don’t get me wrong, I love shopping – I am, after all, 63 per cent female (here come the stereotypes).

The other 37 per cent of me is male. I know this because I always forget birthdays and I enjoy packing the boot of the car on camping trips. And also, if you give me your number in a nightclub I won’t bother calling as I’m just too busy thinking about DIY. Sorry!

Anyway, I like shopping but Ikea tests any shopaholic. It’s like that stopping smoking cure that makes you smoke cigarette after cigarette in a row till you’re sick. After five hours in Ikea, I literally want to run out of the store empty-handed, shouting, “I’m cured!”
Everyone agrees that if you go to Ikea, you will, without doubt, argue with your partner.

Well, I went on my own, joking to friends that I might have a row with myself. That didn’t happen. What does happen if you go to Ikea on your own is that everybody who works there or even walks past you irritates you…

So far, I’ve had three builders’ quotes for the job, and my, they really do live up to their stereotypes! Two of them actually scratched their chins when I asked them the cost. They tapped the wall: “That’s a stud wall, hmm.” I can’t just have an oven installed simply – I will need a new fusebox (of course). For an extra £450. This will entail pulling up all the flooring. Great.

As I lie in bed worrying, I wonder why I’m doing all this work, and then my small child who I am sharing a bed with kicks me and coughs in my ear, and I remember…