Fitted Furniture

When we moved into our house the previous owners left lots of fitted furniture in the bedrooms. This was nice as it meant that we didn’t have to buy any new bedroom cabinets but after redecorating all the rooms over the last few weeks I’ve really seen the downside of it.

The first problem turned up in my daughter’s bedroom. That had fitted cabinets which actually made rather poor use of the space. The room has always smelled damp and I’ve never quite been able to determine where it came from (although the old roof was leaking at one time). The real culprit came to light when I removed the fitted cupboards to find that the skirting board had been removed behind them leaving a gaping hole, through the lathe and plaster, exposing the room to the external wall. It also revealed a mould infested wall filled with crumbling plaster where the units had been attached.

My son’s room also had fitted cabinets which did make decent use of the space but also hid a large crack in the plaster which, again, was very mouldy and also made cleaning the room the devil’s own work. This was also one of the rooms where the ceiling partly collapsed due to a leaking roof last year but my son was very stubborn about not having it redecorated which left the room looking like a bomb had hit it (in fairness that is also down to being occupied by a 15 year old.) To make matters worse, the room also stank. I actually discovered the cause of this when I removed the fitted cupboards - they had been installed over a very manky old bit of carpet.

Not Fitted Furnitire

Anyway, Having spent the last fortnight stripping his room down, fixing the wall and ceiling, insulating and papering the walls (and painting them in “Sky Blue” at his request) and arranging for a new carpet to be fitted; I have finally been able to install some non-fitted furniture that I bought off the internet. I think it looks pretty good although my son complained that the walls are too blue (in fairness he didn’t know what “sky blue” is as he doesn’t leave his room and he lives in Scotland) and he said the furniture looked rather old fashioned (which it is, to be honest, but so is the house and it is actually very solidly made stuff as well as being dirt cheap). However, I think he is now seeing the benefit in all this as he demands that everyone remove their shoes before entering his room.

Stripping paint

I have been doing a lot of decorating in the house recently and one thing that has been something of a bugbear is the paint that is flaking off  most of the internal doors. They can be painted over but this looks rather half-arsed and the only real solution is to strip off the existing paint and start again. The problem is that there is an awful lot of this paint – 120 years’ worth, in fact.

Flaky old paint

The front door was a case in point. I didn’t fancy sanding all the way down so I tried a bottle of paint stripper. This came in an awkward to open can and consisted of a gel that smelled suspiciously like nail varnish remover.

Bubbling up with stripper

After half an hour the paint had bubbled up quite nicely so I scraped it off to reveal – more paint. I gave it another go and did start to get down to the original layer of wood varnish in places but by this point I had run out of paint stripper.

Two lots of stripper.

In the end I removed the rest of the paint with a heat gun and then sanded down the bare wood which was a rather laborious task.

Stripped, sanded and varnished

I have a suspicion that the best way to do this is to remove the vast bulk of the paint with the heat gun and then clear the last of the paint and varnish with the paint stripper but at around £10 a bottle the paint stripper isn’t exactly the cheapest substance in the world. Maybe I should go back to making homebrew – I seem to recall that stuff could strip down the dining room table in seconds.

BT Phone Gone

You may recall that during the Scottish Independence Referendum I posted this picture of the phone box outside our house:

Happier times back in 2014

Well it has gone! Some men turned up with a lorry this morning and took it away. It was pretty tatty so this wasn’t unexpected but usually there is a notice that phone boxes are going to disappear before they snaffle them (as it is possible to “adopt” them) but the first I knew of this was the workmen digging the foundations out. It was then rather unceremoniously lifted on to the truck.

Going...

Going...

Going...

Almost...

 

GONE!

So that's another bit of local history gone for ever. At the rate these are going they will soon be as rare as the old Police boxes. Apart from anything else, the telephone box was a useful landmark when explaining the peculiar numbering system on our road. I'll miss the old thing.