Just the two of us ...

We took things easy over the weekend, only working at the house both mornings rather than all day.  Bizarrely we seem to have achieved more in less time; I suspect there is a moral in that somewhere.

The little bedroom - the one that is earmarked as a work/sewing room - is almost finished - Yay!!  It was surprising just how much we got done when it was just the two of us working in the house.  We decided to make it the room we tried our decorating plan out on - how do the bare walls paint; how many coats of undercoat does the woodwork need; do the windowsills look better in satin or gloss?  Well, now we have tried all those things out we know that:

• It was very difficult to remove all the old paste from the plaster walls; consequently the paint appears to have absorbed in patches.  It's OK, but we think we will use lining paper in other rooms and paint over that.  Hopefully the coverage will be better.
• The woodwork, after sanding, benefits from an undercoat before being given a topcoat.
• The windowsills look better in gloss, but the skirting, doorframes and battens will have a satin finish.

A bit of fiddling around, maybe, but we're much more confident that the rest of the decorating will (fingers crossed) be a little more straightforward.

We have had to re-jig the plan of work yet again.  We are learning that nothing is set in stone when doing up a house, and that plans change with the tides and we have to adapt accordingly.  So rather than fight against the dust and mess we will add to it and spend the next two days, while the bathroom is being finished, sanding all the woodwork in the hallway.  There is a lot to be sanded down and we will just plod our way through it.  Then we have a few days to ourselves before the central heating engineers return to finish the radiators, and the kitchen refit begins.  

N has taken the greenhouse to pieces this afternoon, one piece of glass at a time.  We've pulled some of the garlic (delicious in garlic chicken tonight) and I have finally started my dress for the wedding.  It's a bit of a pot-luck dress - the bodice is from one pattern, the sleeves from another and the skirt will just be cut and sewn!  It's fully lined, a technique I haven't done before, but I shall have to learn as I go.  All good fun, and a welcome distraction from painting and sweeping up.

We have set ourselves some fairly tight time-scales to work to over the next few days.  We have the enthusiasm and the ability, it's a question of whether our bodies will keep up ;-)