The last day, and our main task was to install the Sky dish, tune in the sports channel and settle down on the sofa with a few beers for the weekend.

Until closer inspection revealed that we still had no floors, never mind a sofa, so we just went to breakfast instead, for a moving testimony from Fr Raymond McCullagh.

“Many of you will have caught a terminal illness called Habititis this week. There is no known cure, so don’t even try. I know, because I caught it six years ago on a building site in Nicaragua, when I went down to the well one morning to get water for cement,” he said.

“The water was filthy, but on the other side of the well, a thin little girl called Santos was getting water for it for her family to drink.

“There is a line in a song from Dire Straits, the greatest band that ever lived, which says: ‘We have just one world, but we live in different ones’, and I thought of it at that moment, and again on another Habitat project when in Ethiopia I met a woman called Fadi, who was 50 but looked much older.

“She had no hands, and a disfigured face and feet because of leprosy, and her family did not visit her because they were afraid of it, so she lived alone in a shack the size of a toilet. It was made of plastic sheeting with holes in the roof, so that when it rained, she had to wrap herself in plastic bags to stay dry.

“When I asked her what it would be like to get her Habitat house, she said it would be like walking through the gates of heaven.

“People like her and Santos are reminders that we do only have one world, that we need to share it more, and that giving is more important than receiving.”

“Here,” I said as we were wandering back to the house to start on the floors, “you know the way the house don’t even have a sofa?”

“Aye, what are we going to do about it?” said Stephen. “Dorina was saying yesterday that although they’ve got a home, they haven’t got a stick of furniture, so it’s going to be spring before they can save up enough to buy some and move in.”

“Well, look at that pile of left over insulation and polystyrene over there. We can just carve them one with a Stanley knife,” I said.

“Brilliant idea,” said Mark, Mark Finlay, who was the leading technophile on the site, and possibly all of Romania, whipping out his iPod to download the Ikea catalogue. “I think we’ll go for the Klippan. Nice classical design, I’ve always thought.”

There. Having got that sorted, we set to work, and before we knew it, it was morning break and time for tea and buns, in this case delicious traditional cakes and pastries which the local ladies had baked for us to say thanks.

Waddling slightly, we wobbled back to the house, our tums lapping over our belts like the rising tide under a full moon.

By late morning, House 5b was looking impressively like a home. The wood or tile floors were down and  being edged with beading, the lights were in the ceilings, and Dorina was in her new bathroom, polishing the mirror on the cabinet.

The expression on her face was that of someone who had just won the Lottery, and in a way she had.

Those who move into Habitat homes are given instant dignity and pride, which will not only last but deepen through the years as they pay off their loans.

The distaff side of that, of course, is that those who are still living in slums will feel even more disenfranchised, which is why it is only when Habitat’s dream of everyone having a simple, decent place to live has been achieved that those who have created this unique testament to practical humanity can finally lay down their laptops, pens, mobiles, hammers and drills and breathe a sigh of well-earned satisfaction.

At noon we had our first protest, when Graeme Staples and Janine Crawford from House 2a went temporarily doolally, grabbed the Smiley and McFrown signs and marched up the main street  of Habitat Heights, as it had now been christened, chanting: “What do we want? Smileys! When do we want them? Now!”

At this stage, Mark Finlay, who had finished downloading the Klippan sofa plans to his iPod, transferred them to his Blackberry and printed them out on the miniature printer under his safety helmet, checked the website of the Parades Commission and found that the march was illegal.

Graeme and Janine were promptly taken away, thrashed gently with a length of leftover polystyrene and released without charge.

It was a slightly sombre and contemplative bunch who sat down to lunch, aware that all of this would soon end. Still, at least we were cheered by the arrival of the site dog for her daily treat of ham.

“What should we call her?” said Deena.

“Habitina,” said Marion wisely as our furry friend tucked in.

By 2.35pm, five minutes before the planned finish time, the team in House 2b were working like fury to finish the floor beading.

As we watched them, unable to help, since they were at the point where any more hands making light work would have become cooks spoiling the broth, I felt a hand on my shoulder. It was Florian, the most amiable of the local supervisors, who had been homeless himself until he got one of the first Habitat homes in Beiuş 10 years ago and who now worked for the charity.

“I want to thank you,” he said solemnly.

“Why’s that, Florian?”

“You have a great gift. You make everyone happy. Anyone who knows you is a lucky person, and you must be a very happy man,” he said, holding out his hand.

“Aw, Florian, what a kind thing of you to say,” I said, shaking it and wondering if he was right, why I was so gloomy half the time.

Fortunately, just at that moment,  House 2a was finished right on the button, a band struck up a tune and Adrian Ciorna, the President of Habitat in Romania, stepped onto a makeshift podium.

“Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the newest street in Beiuş. The people who will live here once slept on park benches, in railway stations or under bridges. They have never had parents to look after them, and have never even owned their own bed, yet now they have their own homes,” he said.

Then it was the turn of Aura Ziman, the head of Habitat in Beiuş, to hand over the keys to the new home owners.

“I wish you a happy life, more children and many blessings in your new home,” she said as she handed to Dorina, Kalman and their daughter Andrada a Bible, a bunch of flowers and the keys to House 5b, the one we had built.

It reminded me of the scene in It’s a Wonderful Life when James Stewart and Donna Reed stand on the porch of the Martini home, the first house for the poor they have built in Bailey Park, and bless it with salt so that those who live within will always have health, and bread so that they will never know hunger.

And then, all too soon, it was over. We gathered up our belongings, and handed back our safety helmets and gloves.

And then, as we drove away, I looked back for one last time and saw, in the light of the late afternoon sun, the bouquet of flowers that Dorina and Kalman had been given, tied now to the highest point of their eaves as a symbol of luck, so that those inside, who had once known nothing and had no hope of more, would flourish for the rest of their lives. 

Thursday 8th Oct

The next time anyone tells you that builders are rough, tough manly types, tell them to take a hike.

For the truth is that they’re all a bunch of luvvies.

Tonight, you see, was the highlight of the entertainment industry year; not the Oscars, not the Baftas, but Big Build’s Got Talent, possibly the biggest chance for budding superstars to make their mark since Hughie Green appeared in flickering monochrome on a Rediffusion TV in the corner of the living room.

There, I’ve gone and given away my age again.

All day from early morning, rumours swept the site about what unknown talents would be making their debut appearance.

Rumours, for example, that Jenny Williams was going to do a fan dance using the giant Mr Smiley and Mr McFrown lollipop signs which were used to convey good and bad news at the breakfast briefings every day.

Or rumours that Peter Farquharson was going to stage a 17-hour performance of Wagner’s Ring Cycle, followed by the Ride of the Valkyries in wheelbarrows pushed by Rhinemaidens wearing golden overalls and armed with silver plastering trowels.

All day long, when they weren’t cutting and fitting soffits or sanding and painting walls, groups of builders could be seen trooping off to the sloping meadow behind the site to practise their dance routines under a blazing sun.

From inside the houses came snatches of everything from You’re The One That I Want to cleverly rewritten versions of Hotel California.

At lunchtimes, auditions for the fashion show saw formerly butch joiners and plasterers mincing across the site, hand on hip and pout firmly in place.

It was all too much, particularly since a combination of too many beers and not enough sleep the night before had left me feeling half dead when I woke up.

By lunchtime, I was feeling more like half alive, which a statistician would tell you is exactly the same.

Which just goes to show you how much statisticians know, since they’d probably also have said that since the showers were still alternating between boiling and freezing, they were on average at an equable temperature.

For a little break, a few of us walked up the long hill behind the site, then turned to gaze at the Carpathian Mountains on the horizon, then down at Beiuş, and in the foreground the hive of activity which had been our workplace since the start of the week.

We were silent, and when we spoke at last, it was with the same thought; that three and a half days ago, what had been a patch of waste ground at the edge of the town was now 10 almost complete houses; a transformation so swift and complete that words struggled to express it.

We walked back down the hill, and I returned to House 5b to help Keith and Frank, a veteran joiner from Ballymena, to fit soffits, the short tongue-in-groove lengths of wood which fit between the outside walls and the overhang of a sloping roof.

Watching Frank measure the space to the nearest millimetre, then Keith cutting them and Frank tapping them into place and nailing them home, was to watch two masters at work.

These were men who in an instant summed up complex practical problems, found a solution in another instant and applied it in a third instant.

They were problems which it would have taken me from now to Christmas and a half to solve, and yet Frank, a modest and jocular man who kept us laughing all afternoon with his dry wit and easy-going banter, dismissed his talents modestly when I praised them.

“Och sure, it’s only common sense,” he said as below us appeared the imposing sight of the head of the local Romanian Orthodox Church, Bishop Sofronie, sweeping down the street in flawing blue robes, his several gold chains of office clanking with every step and in his wake an entourage of silent monks.

At the exact moment that this procession arrived below us, there stepped out of the house opposite the figure of Coleraine priest Fr Raymond McCullagh, who was not long back from building 150 houses in Ethiopia and who had been working so hard all day that he was covered from head to foot in plaster and dust.

“How you doing?” said Raymond, extending a white-caked hand which the Bishop accepted gingerly. “Fancy giving us a hand?”

“I will make a symbolic gesture,” announced the Bishop, stepping inside and holding a paint roller against a wall briefly for photographs, then brushing his hands and sweeping off with his entourage.

The day’s work done at last, we headed wearily home to shower and prepare ourselves for the evening’s entertainment.

At first, all did not go well. The bus which was supposed to collect us sped past, and only returned almost an hour later.

In fact, it was lucky we were late, for we arrived to find a display of Romanian folk dancing which would have been delightful for 15 minutes, but which went on, by my reckoning, for three and a half weeks.

As we were hunting through our phrasebooks for the Romanian for  “Stop dancing. We want our dinner”, they twirled to a satisfactory conclusion, and we sat down to eat.

Only for the Mayor to start a speech, the gist of which was that Beiuş hoped to  be rid of poor housing by 2012. If he’d finished his speech by then, that is.

I could already see the headlines in next week’s Beiuş Bugle:  Two hundred die of starvation in hotel horror. Mayor arrested.

At last we ate, and the first of the 21 acts signed up for the evening began. Naturally, House 5b had prepared a witty sketch called Star Trek: The Dark Side, a mildly risqué performance for five characters; Brain, Eyes, Ears, Libido and Scottie.

It was so well greeted that several adoring members of the audience rushed up to the stage at the end and threw themselves at our feet.

Sadly, it turned out that they had just tripped in the rush to get to the bar before it closed.

After that, I have a vague recollection of a disturbingly large number of drag acts which I would condemn as an affront to the morals of the nation, were it not for the fact that I found myself appearing  in one of them, a fashion show involving an eclectic medley of ripped T-shirts, work tools, ear-rings and manbags.

Tragically, at the end of the night, our sketch was beaten by three Romanians singing hymns. Naturally, we immediately suspected a religious conspiracy against Libido, and when we discovered that the result had actually been decided in advance for the sake of political correctness, we went on the rampage through Beiuş, burning churches, slaughtering goats and virgins and staging a black mass in the town square in scenes similar to when the town had been razed to the ground by the Mongols in the 13^th Century.

Oh, all right. We just sighed at the unfairness of it all, had another beer and went to bed.

Wednesday 7 Oct

The day began with the heartbreaking story of Dorina Balasz, the woman who had originally been moving with her husband Kalman and daughter Andrada into the house next to us, but was now moving into 5b, the house we were building.

She had been abandoned when her mother gave a false name to the maternity hospital and walked out into the night just after giving birth, a tragically common practice for families who could not afford to raise their children.

After growing up in the huge orphanage in Beiuş, she had found a job making shoes, then lost it and ended up on the streets until she met Kalman.

She was now working again, but she, Kalman and two-year-old Andrada were living with his parents in a small flat with a tiny kitchen and no hot water.

“When I heard that we were to get a Habitat house, it was the greatest moment of joy I have ever felt. Up until then I had thought that my life would always be ugly, and although I had always dreamed of having a home, I could never see a way that it would happen.

“So I want to thank the team building House 5b from the bottom of my heart.”

That was us, and as I looked around the table, I could see that I was not the only one close to shedding a manly tear. Especially the girls.

And so to work, helped this morning by two Romanian Olympic legends; rower Elisabeta Lipă, who was in the Guinness Book of Records for winning five golds, two silvers and a bronze in six Olympics between 1984 and 2004, not to mention being a General in the Romanian Army, and weightlifter Nicu Vlad, who had won gold in Los Angeles, silver in Seoul and bronze in Atlanta.

And when stapling plastic sheeting to ceiling joists becomes an Olympic spor, as I fully expect it to at London in 2012, I confidently predict two more golds for both of them.

On the way to lunch, I met Lindsay Munce and Angela Snow, the two Americans who were filming a documentary of the week.

“Hey Geoff,” said Lindsay, “anything exciting happening today for us to shoot?”

“No problem. What about if I commandeer that truck again and we film the car chase sequence?” I said.

“Perfect. Although we can’t really do a chase with only one vehicle,”  said Angela wisely. “What about if you drive it down that hill, over that ramp and demolish the meal tent?”

“Can do. Do you want me to set it on fire first?”

“Absolutely. And if you can hit that telegraph pole in mid-air and bring all the lines down in a shower of sparks just before you crash into the tent in flames, that would be great.”

Splendid. I told Angus, our team leader, that I’d be a bit late back from lunch, and went off to get some petrol and steal the truck.

Sadly, at this stage I was kidnapped by Keith Barclay of Graham Construction, who needed me to work on some facia barges, the planks that run along the bottoms of roofs, at the top of the eaves.

This could have been due to my phenomenal charm and hammering ability, but I suspect it was more to do with the fact that at 6ft 7ins, I was the only person who could reach.

In any case, it was worth it, since Keith introduced me to the untold delights of the chalk line, a roll of string covered in red chalk.

To use it, you hold both ends tight against a wall, then pull the string away from the wall and let it go, leaving a perfectly straight red line to follow.

A highly technical process known as pinging, this was such fun that I immediately christened Keith the King of Ping and resolved to buy a Ping String the moment I got home and mark straight lines between everything at home, including the cats.

Keith was only one of a remarkable bunch from Graham’s, who were so far ahead of schedule on their own house that they were now working on four others, dispensing leadership, wise advice and pinging in equal quantities.

At four, all pinged out, we set off to visit the local Roma or gypsy community.

As the bus set off, a cascade of hard hats which had been stored on the overhead shelf cascaded down and bounced off the heads off their owners, almost creating the ultimate irony of someone being killed by a safety helmet.

Where we were heading, though, had even more irony; a shack on the edge of the Roma slum dubbed the White House by the locals, who lived up to 25 to a house under the benign gaze of a moustachioed patriarch called Covaci Levi, an imposing figure in a navy fedora and black shirt and trousers who looked like Yul Brynner in The Magnificent Seven.

“I’m trying to build a house for my own family, but we have no money,” he said, spreading his arms wide and shrugging with hopeless eloquence.

As he talked, a horse and cart clopped by, creating a scene barely changed since the 19^th Century.

Back on the bus, we bumped for miles into the bucolic countryside until we came to a valley of woods, streams and meadows.

A place so beautiful that the locals say that living there adds 20 years to your life, this is home to three Roma tribes who are variously horse traders, blacksmiths and tinsmiths, who have no dealings with each other to the extent that any attempt at intermarriage will mean banishment or death.

We stopped at a straggling hamlet , got out and were immediately surrounded by children. To describe the homes from which they came as dirt poor would have been falling short of the issue. The cooking was done on a time-worn stove on the front porch, and I suspect the rabbits in cages nearby were not pets, but supper.

Yet freshly washed clothes hung on the line, and all the children were cheerful and clean. And, as i discovered when I produced a bag of sweets and was  swamped by a tsunami of them, big fans of Werther’s Originals.

To say thanks, one who was all of four years old, insisted on giving me what was a very high five for him, if a low one for me.

The plan for this village was for it to merge with another half-dozen to form a unique commune of Romanians, Hungarians and Roma, under the Mayorship of an imposing man called Ioan Man, who had turned up to talk to the villagers.

“The problem is that the Government will not give me one euro for the Roma. These are diligent people who share everything and love each other without measure, but there are no jobs for them,” he said.

“What would make these people happy?” I asked his interpreter.

“Houses, electricity, clothes and health,” came back the unanimous answer.

“We have 12 people in one house, and the roof is falling apart. Who is going to help us?” said a wizened grandmother with a smattering of gold teeth.

“Send in an application for aid, and I will see what I can do,” said the Mayor.

The old woman looked down at his impressive paunch, the expression on her face suggesting that she thought his food budget for a year would help them more than an application form.

As we bumped across the railway tracks on the way home, everyone looked left and right, just in case after surviving death by safety helmet, we would be killed by the weekly train.

Across the tracks and still alive, I struck up a conversation with Katherine, a former BBC producer whose husband James ran a Northern Ireland firm which supplied the linen for Marks & Spencer shirts, among others.

In the Nineties, she said, another Northern Ireland linen company had suddenly closed its mill in Estonia, plunging workers there into such poverty  that they had to put their children into orphanages because they could not afford to feed them.

Distraught, the Ballymena-born manager of the mill phoned James and asked if he would buy some linen from them.

“Absolutely. We’ll try anything once,” said James, starting a fruitful relationship which only ended 10 years later when they sold it to a Swede who now produces Ikea bedlinen there.

By the time she finished telling me the story, we were at our last stop, one of the Habitat developments in Beiuş.

It could not have been more different to the scenes we had witnessed earlier; a suburban idyll of pastel houses, rose gardens, parked cars and children cycling or playing football in the street.

In the evening, deciding to take a break from the standard fare of pork and chicken at the hotel restaurant where we normally ate en masse, we decamped to a local pizza place where, a bunch of Irish people in a Romanian restaurant serving Italian food, we ended up ordering in Spanish because it was the only language the waitress and I had in common.

“What would you recommend?” I said.

“Well, as well as pizza, we have a local Transylvanian speciality. I cannot translate it, but you will love it,” she said.

She was right. It was delicious in any language.

And Murphy’s Law being what it is, you will not be surprised to hear that we returned to the hotel for the bus home to find everyone emerging and saying what a delicious steak they’d had.