Comment: Horror across Herts as Storm Eunice leaves a trail of destruction

For anyone who says renovating during the winter months is not a problem, I have two words: Storm Eunice. 

Following a rare red weather warning by the Met Office last Friday, the East of England was hit hard by epic gales. 

Walls and fence panels were toppled, travel was disrupted, and hundreds of homes were left without power. 

Herts residents got off lightly compared to many however, with no lives lost and the ongoing consequences now mostly limited to gappy boundaries. 

We escaped the worst of it too, despite big chunks of our house having been removed by builders days earlier.

At the end of last week, most of our kitchen walls and part of a front bedroom had been knocked through. The scaffolding had been neatly wrapped to protect against adverse weather, and things were moving along nicely. Then Eunice arrived.

By Friday lunchtime, the storm was taking hold and the builders wisely downed tools. During the afternoon and over the weekend, we looked on as the scaffolding's wrapping was forcibly ripped apart. 

Turns out sheets of flapping scaffolding wrap can be fairly noisy. We hoped the neighbours weren't getting annoyed. We also hoped they weren't going to be taken out by the loose sheets that looked like they could easily take flight. 

By Monday, it was in tatters, though still attached. Saggy gaps at the front resulted in soggy plasterboard in what had been my son's room, though the furniture wrapped in a plastic dust sheet and shoved in the far corner had somehow escaped the rain.

It's still a bit windy out, but the worst of the storm has passed. Tough times for many residents, but a boon for fence installers, roofers and bricklayers.