Stephen always calls at the most inconvenient times. He doesn’t answer his phone, or texts, or emails. In fact he is almost impossible to get hold of, so when he calls I behave as if it might be David Attenbourough on the phone calling me to say he’s retiring and they need a front-woman to travel the world and talk calmly to camera while an angry gorilla makes warning charges in her general direction. 

  
Today I am cycling through Kelvingrove park on the way to work but I manage to answer the phone while in motion. It proves rather dangerous to try and negociate crowds of primary school children wandering towards the school gate while trying to hold a conversation about building a house so I dismount.
  

I’m beginning to think it might be a deliberate ploy to catch me off-guard without my list of essential things to hand (the only thing keeping me somewhat on track in this build). Anyway, it’s a very effective way of making sure I can’t think of many, or even sometimes any, of the things I’m supposed to be telling him. It doesn’t help that I am far too easily distractible with chat about other things so effectiveness seems doomed, especially as I haven’t met Stephen on site for a very long time. 

  
The house might seem done but it isn’t. There’s this and that to do and I need curtains, landscaping, shed and lean to thing that will be a wood store/bike shelter, but officially a bin store. And I also need to pay people (including Stephen). All this takes yet more money. SURELY NOT MORE MONEY???

 
But before I spend any more money I need to claim back my VAT and before I can claim back my VAT I need a building warrant. And for the building warrant I need an EPC (done!!!) a Form Q (see below) and all sorts of stuff to be sorted. I ask Stephen when I should arrange the final visit from building control. 
“When it’s all done”. He says. 

This, if my experience so far is anything to go by, could be forever or it could be never. 

 
So I gather together all the documents I need to send to get my building control certificate and I arranged a visit from Tony the building control officer three weeks hence. 
  

And it shouldn’t be that hard. There’s only a few building-control-critical things that need to be done. This drainage pipe is one.      

 Whether we need a step at the back another. And a barrier at the turn of the stair. And a few other miniscule things like a sustainability certificate stuck in the utility room, and a notice about the wastewater treatment. 
 

I have taken to calling the house phone to see what’s happening at the house – it gives a bit more information to me since the flow of information direct from Stephen more or less ceased. Peter was there and let me know what was going on. He was putting in the thing on the stairs in Pine. PINE? IT WAS SUPPOSED TO BE OAK. I yelled to myself in my head and immediately texted Stephen. He actually got back to me straight away for a change and aquiesced after an emphatic text or two. Peter would take it out and It Would Be Oak. 

  

   …and doesn’t it look nice in oak?

I gathered EPC, electrical and fire alarm certificate, Form Q, heat pump certificate, and a few other bits of paper and filled in the form. Then I sent it recorded delivery. 

  
There was a lot of impenetrable guff on the form. Read the following and decide if you are a relevant person. Was I a relevant person? – I decided that I may not know whether A or B were true but C certainly was. I am a relevant person. isn’t it nice to feel relevant?   

  

Form Q

This is apparently a form where my engineer certifies that my house isn’t going to fall down, which seems rather brave of him. He wanted detailed information and evidence about the windows and how they were installed and about the Juliette balcony, which only had to go in to satisfy building control when we found that the windows weren’t how they were supposed to be. (Grrrrr again Scotframe).
   

I was supposed to have evidence of how the windows were attached in place (fortunately I took a photo of a window before the plasterboard went on to get the size of the windowsill so I had that). 
 

I get all the bumpf sent off for the FormQ and get started on the VAT claim so it’s all ready to go. 
 

Much of the text was indesipherable by normal human beings and was designed to make the most anally retentive pedant want to chew their own arm off. I plodded through receipts and invoices and piled them up till I had a file 2 inches thick. 

So now we have the paperwork ready to go and a deadline for everything to be done. So where is the form filling fun as suggested in the title? Has it been fun? No not really, I just thought I’d better write about some of this boring stuff and wanted to try and make it interesting. Besides, I like a bit of alliteration.  
Postscript: it’s now 6 weeks sis ve I wrote that blog. I have my completion certificate. But I don’t yet have my VAT refund.