DIY, FYI

As I've not blogged in ages, it's bound to be disjointed and weird.

Ok, so the main topic was always going to be the flat. Things have been going fine, we seemed to veer off track into quite a lot of going out and not much saving in November, which ate both time and money. It's ok though, as we've now bought our flights to South Africa for late Feb/early March and the resulting credit card bill has shocked us both into a state of penny-pinching.

Ian, bless him, is bearing the brunt of the work. I always knew I was lazy, and he industrious (along with the Lucozade, we've now accounted for 60% of why I date him) but he has been really amazing in just getting down and doing the slog involved. I bags the fun jobs, like stripping the previous owners' dubious taste off the walls, and he gets on with the nasty ones, like skimming and sanding the walls to a state of paint-ability again. In return, I am now head chef, head dishwasher, and most importantly it seems, head tea-maker. I got off lightly, people.

So the current status is: hallway is painted. Before and after shots, all repeats from Ian and my flickr accounts:

The whole thing was wallpapered, you can really see the stripey stuff at the bottom. Dado rail is there too, and the skirting and doorframes are painted here.

The list. You are witnessing learning here, people, in real time. We have insanely huge DIY areas in our brains now.

Me removing the offending wallpaper, this is actually awesome, theraputic.

Ian removing the stuff higher on the walls. Once the steam gathers in the room you can really go for it.

This is the really nasty bit, the dust from sanding like this is indescribable.

We went with cotton twill, bottom block.

And chose some cool uplighters that light down, too.

As Gordon Ramsay would say, Hallway.... DONE.

Yes, the floors, skirting boards and doorframes still need doing, but all the floors throughout the front of the house are going to be done in one fell swoop, and frankly, I'm damn proud of the work we've done here. We're far, far away from the stage of prettying up the place but we're really getting there - we've even managed to find some sofas in the post xmas sales that we've got our eyes on.

I've found that when friends ask about how the work is going, I tend to get a bit complainy about whatever particular thing might be that day's problem, and they counteract with a 'but it's yooooours'. Yes, it is, and I love that. It's hard to look past the dust and the time-consuming nature of it, but every so often I do, and it feels pretty cool.