Clearing the Drawing Room

The new carpet is coming tomorrow – essentially part six of the huge job of re-carpeting the entire house.  When we moved in, every room was carpeted in the same green carpet – it obviously must have been of good quality when it was laid – but I would guess that was about 40 years ago.  So it all has to be replaced, but doing it in one go would be a) very expensive b) horribly disruptive – so we have been doing it room by room.

a) J’s  basement lounge – existing carpet was sucking at your feet when you went into the room

b) J’s office and utility room (vinyl flooring)

c) Kitchen – the lino in it before was unspeakable

d) My bedroom – I am going to play the “disability” card here and say that it hurts my dodgy foot walking on hard flooring

e) My office (same – and I realize I am coming over as selfish here)

f) The drawing room as the principal room in the house

g) The next stage which I am going to get a quote for tomorrow is the most expensive one – the hall, stairs and landing.  R and J do not know this yet

Anyway – we had to move all the stuff out into the dining room for the carpet fitters – and it is only when you do this that you realize how much stuff a large room with many Victorian antiques can hold.  This is what the dining room looks like at the moment.  Saphy had good fun jumping from one pile of delicate china to another until we finally managed to catch her and close the door.

J and I also had to move the grandfather clock which meant unscrewing it from the wall and taking out the weights, pendulum and mechanism.  This was not as difficult as I thought it would be – but the proof of the pudding will be putting it back together again.