My mate Miles and I are stood at the bottom of my north London garden, measuring the shed. It is late at night, but the garden is illuminated by the surprise birthday party for me going on behind us.

“If we ripped out the shed and the Wendy house, we could run the pool from wall to wall and we’d have about 25ft,” I figure.

“Yeah,” agrees Miles, “but where will we put the hot tub?” This divorce lark isn’t as bad as it first looked. A year ago, I was being nagged for not mowing the lawn. Now I’m thinking about swimming in it instead.

It doesn’t matter whether you are the man, the woman, the guilty, the innocent, in ecstacy, in trouble or in denial: when your marriage comes to an end, you have to find somewhere to live.

For me, it was simple: I love my house. I bought it when I sold my last magazine, Jack, and it had cost me £1m. Having seen the marriage crumble and lost the right to wake up every day with my son, Marlais, I decided the last thing I wanted was to surrender my home, too.

It was more than just a building. It was what I’d swapped my last job for, and knowing I’m better at raising and earning cash than spending time with estate agents, I gave my wife enough money to buy two houses and started converting Our House into My House.

The first thing I wanted to do was set about making it much more fun for Marlais. Giving him some degree of consistency was also a factor in my decision to stay in the house. After a long time of seeing his parents arguing, I wanted him to feel excited about coming to the place where all three of us had previously lived together.

We drove to a tyre depot and a builders’ merchant, bought some rope and an old radial and, with the advice of Jo Adams, the gardener, ringing in my ears — “I’ll string this up so long as you don’t hang yourself” — we built a cool swing.

Next, I called Anthony Atkinson, who used to illustrate for Jack, and had him paint two huge superhero murals, which left both Marlais and me in awe.

Then it was time to get a professional designer in to help Daddy.

Ever since Factory Records boss Tony Wilson told me that his successful bands were the ones that let the graphic artists do their sleeves without interfering (New Order, Happy Mondays, Joy Division), I’ve always figured it is best to leave colour and design to an expert.

I would be as adept at interior design as I would be at dentistry or engineering, so I turned to Steve Lait of In2Style, who had both amazing City Boy pads and family homes in his book of work. Thankfully, he sensed I wasn’t looking to step back inside the James Bond fantasyland of a men’s magazine so much as move forward with my newfound situation.

“What I’m going to do,” he explained, “is give the place a sense of your own personality. Some colour and energy.”

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