I Ran My House Build From the Hospital Car Park Between Night Shifts

A reader writes:

I have been a nurse for nineteen years, the last eleven on a medical ward, mostly nights. When I decided to build a house on the half-acre I had bought outside May Pen, everybody had an opinion. My mother said to get a man to deal with it. My pastor’s wife said to get a contractor who would “handle everything”. My friend from nursing school said, “When you going to sleep?”

I did not have the money for a contractor who would handle everything, and I did not have a man. What I had was a small team: a foreman named Mr Clarke whom a colleague recommended, the plans from a draughtsman, an engineer who came at the key stages, and a hardware store that would deliver. And I had a strange timetable: twelve-hour shifts from seven at night to seven in the morning, three or four nights a week.

So I built the house from the hospital car park.

Here is how it went. At the end of a shift, before I drove home, I would sit in the car with a cup of tea from the canteen and call Mr Clarke. He started work at seven, so we would talk while he was walking the site. He would send me photos and voice notes: the trench, the steel, the blocks. I would look at them with eyes that had been open for twenty-four hours, and ask questions. Then I would go home and sleep until two, and on my days off I would drive out to see everything for myself.

I will be honest: Mr Clarke did not think much of me at first. He was polite, but he talked to me like I was a child who had wandered onto the site. When I asked why the columns were being poured before the engineer had come to look at the steel, he said, “Miss, I been doing this thirty years.” I said, “I have been checking people’s medication for nineteen years, and I still check it twice.” He laughed, and he waited for the engineer. That was the day things changed between us.

Nursing helped more than I expected. On the ward we write everything down: times, doses, what we saw, what we did. I did the same with the build. I kept a hardback book in the car with every delivery, every payment, every conversation. When the hardware store said I had received forty bags of cement, I could show them it was thirty-two. When Mr Clarke said I had agreed to an extra window, I could show him I had said I would think about it. He started calling it “the chart”.

Nursing also taught me handover. At the end of every shift we tell the next nurse what matters. I started doing that with Mr Clarke on Friday afternoons: what was done, what was next, what we were waiting on, what money was available. It stopped a lot of surprises.

I made mistakes. The biggest was not getting a written quote for the roof. The roofer I found through a cousin gave me a price over the phone and then charged much more, saying the steel had gone up. I paid it because the rain was coming and I was too tired to fight. I also chose tiles in a hurry after a bad night, and I don’t love them. And there was a month, around the time the walls went up, when I had a patient die on my shift, a young man, and then the next morning a delivery was wrong, and I sat in the car park and cried for an hour. I nearly gave up that week.

What kept me going was partly stubbornness and partly my church sister, Marcia. She would ring me on Saturday mornings and pray with me, short and plain, before I went out to site. She never gave me building advice. She just reminded me that God saw the tired woman in the car park, not only the house.

It took twenty-six months. It is a modest three-bedroom house with a verandah facing east, because after a night shift I wanted morning sun, not afternoon heat. There is a ceiling fan in every room and blackout curtains in mine so I can sleep in the day. The kitchen is small but everything is in reach. My mother came to the dedication and said, “You did well,” which from her is a speech.

I am not writing to say everyone should do what I did. Some days I think it nearly cost me my health. But I want women especially, and people with strange work schedules, to know that you do not have to be on site every day to be in charge. You need good people, clear records, the courage to ask questions, and somebody praying for you.

Mr Clarke came by last month to look at a crack in the verandah step. He said, “You was the most particular client I ever had.” I think he meant it kindly.

— Sharon, Clarendon

Editor’s note

Sharon’s letter shows that managing a build is less about being present every hour and more about the habits you bring: keeping records, insisting on proper checks at key stages, and clear weekly handovers. Her one big regret, a roof price agreed only by phone, is a reminder to get every significant quote in writing, however rushed you feel.

She is also honest about the cost to her health. Anyone taking on a build alongside demanding work should plan for rest and accept help, whether practical or prayerful. “Come to Me, all you who labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest” (Matthew 11:28) applies to builders too.

Reader letters may be edited for length and clarity, and names and identifying details are changed.

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