The End of the Beginning

I know we still have a long way to go, but today we made some major steps forwards.

All the new flooring went in to the basement.  The intention had been to paint the walls in the lounge before the carpet went down – just so we could enjoy (well, I say enjoy but you know what I mean) sloshing the paint on without worrying about spilling any.  This went wrong in two separate ways – firstly, painting over the wallpaper just didn’t work – it immediately just started to peel off and bubble up.  This might have been better if I had used an oil based primer – but even so, it was just not well attached to the wall.  So we had to abandon the idea and buy some wallpaper.  Just to make things as easy as possible I got some “paint the wall” wallpaper and the paste to go with it – ready made stuff which is pink when painted on but dries white.  This was ordered from Amazon for next day delivery, but it never turned up and we edged closer to carpeting day.  Three days later when I was just about to cancel it, it finally turned up but the box was all staved in at the side.  Inside, the carton of paste had burst and coated everything else in the box.  So we never did get the papering done and we will now need to be careful of the new carpets when we come to do the painting.  But never mind, the new carpets went in and they look great.

Also we got a decorator to do R’s office.  It was actually the worst decorated room in the house – very faded pink rose patterned wallpaper.  Two things stopped me doing it myself.  Firstly the sheer height of the ceiling which would involve standing right at the top of a ladder (since the joints were fused in my foot last year I don’t have a lot of side to side movement which affects my ability to balance on one foot).  Secondly, R uses his office all the time so we were sneaking into a four day window when he was away at a conference – I could never have done a room of this size in this time.

So this is what it looks like with the paint done – obviously the furniture needs to go back in place and pictures put up – but it is a huge improvement.

Also, the electricians who came to wire the showers suddenly announced that they would do the data cabling while they were here.  Up until now J has had a BT line into the basement and R has a cable into the first floor, but my office on the ground floor was stuck with an indifferent wi-fi connection restricted by the thick walls to about 40mb via either router.  The ethernet cable has of course fixed this and now I get this.

We are getting there!