Saturday 12th February 2011 – We just worked half a day today.

Liz finished papering the bathroom and then painted the half that she had papered yesterday. It looks quite nice too. I carried on scrubbing down the walls in the living room and you wouldn’t believe how much dirt and muck and mess there is on them. Mind you, it doesn’t half look better now.

In the corner next to the bathroom is a little alcove where I hang the coats and leave the shoes. Marianne and I wallpapered there a few years ago but the bit at the bottom is quite badly soiled and needed doing again. But learning the lesson from my attic at home, and bearing in mind that we have a box of unused wall tiles going spare, Terry cut off some of the wallpaper and tiled down there. Now that’s so much better and of course if you are throwing muddy shoes about then all you need to do is to wipe down the tiles.

After lunch we had a brainstorming session and decided on yet another change of plan. The grouting of the WC tiles is awful and nothing we seem to do can clean it up. Grinding out the stuff doesn’t work either as it just creates dust everywhere and there isn’t the room to swing a grinder around so we decided that we would take them off and replace them. The sink is fine but the WC has seen better days and so we are going to replace that, put new pipework in the bathroom and change the tap.

And so with all of that, the stuff to seal the balcony, a pile of door handles and so on, we spent over €400 at Brico. The one at Mont St Jean instead, where they have the rudest staff in the whole wide world. And where they also have the rudest customers in the world too and Terry and I can give it back in spades.

At the Carrefour there we spent well over €100 in food for the next week. We’ve each given our orders for meals and so Liz knows what to cook. Spicy bean fallujahs with spicy rice, and rice pudding are on the menu – I can tell you that 😉

Once the shopping was finished the staff expressed a wish to be wined and dined at a Pizza Hut. Their wish is my command, unless I want to finish off this apartment all on my own, and so a good time was had by all.

But seeing how much these renovations are costing me, I hope that we can finish the work before my heart and my wallet give out. I’m not used to spending money like this.

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