I've been on holiday all this week. At least I haven't gone into the office to look bored and swear at computers all day. Instead, I have been working like a slave and swearing at power tools, trying to get my house in some sort of order. The living room was finished last Friday - more or less. I still have to do something about the coffee table and I am planning on a replacement TV. I even went as far as looking at one on Monday. With the living room finished we have decanted all the furniture from the back room which is now our main bedroom, so what was the bedroom has now become a dining room. However, all of this has involved some hefty redecoration and, being a bit skint, I have decided to do it all myself instead of hiring someone competent.
I think it started off looking quite reasonable until I
discovered that I would need at least three coats of paint to cover the
previous owner's colour scheme. I'm actually a bit colour blind but even I
could tell it was bad. This took longer than I had planned and ended up with a
few 12 hour painting shifts. At least I was able to listen to a few CDs whilst
I was working. Anyway, the new bedroom was finished by about Tuesday and it
looks fantastic. The old bedroom was, effectively, a dining room and it was a
bit dark and miserable as a bedroom. In fact, sleeping in a downstairs reception
room of an old Victorian house has something of a student slum feel about it
and isn't something I particularly want to go back to. The new room is bright
and airy and has a real luxury feel about it. As a bonus, I re-engineered the
bed. We had to by a new frame when we moved and the old divan mattress wasn't
really suited to the wooden bedframe. I added several more supports underneath
which has a much firmer, more comfortable feel about it. I'm actually quite
pleased about that and it doesn't spoil the look of the bed.
This all meant that the dining room was now freed up. To
try and brighten it up a bit my wife suggested that we should paint it all
white. On the face of it, this sounds easy enough but after a couple of hours
of painting snow-blindness sets in and it is almost impossible to see what has
or hasn't been painted. At this point, I also started running short of paint,
having foolishly thought a 25 litre tub would be enough. I just about managed
to stretch it and this just left the flooring to complete. Our neighbours have
sanded and varnished the original floor boards of their house. This looks
fantastic and retains one of the original features of the house. I'm largely in
favour of this kind of thing but our boards, whilst sound, have seen better
days - which is probably why the previous owners have carpeted much of it.
However, I think it is possible to keep a house modern whilst being sympathetic
to the original architecture. After all, if I was really going to restore the
house to its original features it would have to be gas lighting, no central
heating and an outside bog - and that is
just not going to happen where I am concerned.
We ended up having a look around a few carpet and
flooring places in Falkirk. There is always the option of linoleum but I don't
think the floor boards are flat enough and I can't pronounce it anyway. The
easy option for a hard floor is laminate. I've fitted this a few times and,
whilst it does result in sore knees, it is easy enough to do and the results
are quite pleasing. As it was, Nina decided that solid oak flooring would look
nice. On the one hand this is a good choice as it is hardwearing and in keeping
with the period of the house. On the down side, it is an absolute bastard of a
material to lay down. It takes ages to prepare it and every board has to be
nail gunned in place. My eldest son, Raymond, was very helpful in holding the
boards in place whilst I fitted them and was generally useful, passing tools
and tidying up to take the strain off me. He also learned a large lexicon of
foul mouthed angry utterances which he will be able dazzle his school fiends
with. Much of this occurred when I dropped the saw on my hand and had to clean
the blood of the buggering wall. The one good thing is the end result is
stunning. I took a picture on my mobile phone camera to demonstrate:
Yes, I know. The phone is crap. I had a similar sorry effort
when I tried to take a picture of a whippet wearing a fez:
Anyway, it's back to the office next week for a bit of a
rest. I also seem to have a leaky roof so I expect that's the new telly down
the drain...
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