Tag Archives: painting

Thursday 19th June 2025 – WE NOW HAVE …

… a fridge-freezer downstairs to go with the oven that came on Wednesday. A large van must have done half a dozen laps around here before deciding that this building is where he wants to be.

And we need a large fridge-freezer too because the temperature is ridiculous today. My faithful cleaner is convinced that she saw 38°C indicated on a temperature reader in the town. If that’s the case, it’s the hottest that I’ve been since I was IN HUNGARY IN 2020.

It didn’t look like that last night. It was fairly cool when I came in here to write up my notes, and I was so comfortable that I wasn’t in any rush to finish. It ended up a slow, leisurely evening and after midnight I was still letting it all hang out.

Eventually I made it into bed and was asleep quite quickly. But once again, not for long because at 05:35 I was wide awake.

With the extra-early start, I dictated the radio notes that i’d written earlier in the week – and then had to dictate them a second time as the first attempt didn’t record. And the volume is still weak and feeble, just like me at the moment

By now, everyone else was awake so I went for a wash and shave in case I meet Emilie the Cute Consultant this afternoon. Then we assembled in the kitchen and sat around drinking coffee.

The Hound of the Baskervilles dragged its master off for walkies and I came in here to listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. I was doing something with the radio last night, having to play around with various tracks to work out how long they were and work out whereabouts in the programme they would actually fit. I wasn’t doing it for very long because I don’t know what awoke me but I happened to wake up round about 05:35 so I’ve no idea.

One of the songs that was going round and round in my head when I awoke was Steve Earle’s THE DEVIL’S RIGHT HAND, sung by the Phil Beer Band. It was probably stuck in my brain due to the fact that I was listening to a concert by the group just before I went to bed.

After that, I made a start on editing the radio notes but everyone came back from walkies so we had more coffee.

Interestingly, the hackles on the Hound of the Baskervilles stood up and he began to have a deep, menacing growl. 30 seconds later, Isabelle the Nurse came in. He barked at her but she soon won him over and left me thinking “I wish that she’d stroke me like that!”

Once she’d left I could have breakfast, and then we plotted what we intended to do this afternoon and sorted everything out. We also watched a strange van circle around here a couple of times

My cleaner came bang on time to fit my anaesthetic patches, having noticed a strange van circling around. She’d asked then if it was for me but then denied it all, and carried on circling.

The taxi was early, and when I descended, I noticed that the van had made up its mind and had stopped. They had the tail-lift down and were manoeuvring … "PERSONoeuvring" – ed …. an enormous package – my fridge-freezer. My friend helped them move it into the apartment downstairs while I rode off into the sunset.

There were two other people to pick up on the way, but even so, we were early. However, it was to no avail, being early, because they weren’t ready for me. I had to loiter around for twenty minutes.

The coupling-up was painful as usual, and then I was so exhausted that I crashed out for fifteen minutes or so. The staff, though, left me mostly alone, except for the odd check of my blood pressure when the alarm sounded.

In the middle of it all, there were several ‘phone calls. There was another delivery but the driver was lost. Consequently I had to liaise with him, my friend and my faithful cleaner in order that the parcel arrived as it should. All of this effort for a new spice rack.

Océane uncoupled me this evening, and not for the first time, she held my hand while she compressed my arm, which I thought was sweet. When I was let go, she came with me to hand my bag over to the taxi driver, and as she turned to go back in, I expressed my surprise that she wasn’t going to come home with me.

But honestly, any one of a dozen or so of those nurses could come hime with me any time they liked.

Back here, I inspected the new purchases, and also the insides of the wardrobes that my friend had painted for me. They look so much better now, and will look even nicer when they are dry.

As a treat, I took him out to the Italian restaurant that we like. I had my usual penne al arrabbiata and he had ham in a gorgonzola sauce. I hope that it tasted better than it smelt.

So right now, thoroughly exhausted and the fan on to try to cool everything down, I’m off to bed where I intend to sleep for a week.

But seeing as we have been talking about the delivery driver … "well, one of us has" – ed … when I came home my friend told me that the Hound of the Baskervilles had been chasing the delivery driver down the street in his van.
"That’ll teach him a valuable lesson" I said. "Next time he comes here, he’ll take the keys out of the ignition and close the door"
Nevertheless, I was quite impressed. I didn’t even realise that the Hound of the Baskervilles could drive

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Monday 16th March 2015 – I’VE FINISHED …

… painting the walls of the bedroom today. At least, I’ve done all that I intend to do.

painted wallpaper bedroom les guis virlet puy de dome franceThe plasterboard joints wre still showing through the second coat that I did on Saturday morning, and so that called for a third coat. I had to put some more white paint into the mix to make sure that I had enough paint, and now the colour is too light. Not only that, it’s rather patchy too and, even worse, you can still see the plasterboard joints.

Ahhh well, never mind.

I had a phone call from Cecile and that ended up with me being sidetracked for half an hour or so. Nevertheless, I had finished the painting by 17:00 and that gave me time to start the emptying of Caliburn.

That took about an hour and a half and there’s still a plie of stuff left in there for which I can’t find room at the moment. But it’s a long time since Caliburn has been this empty.

And I was right about some tins of kidney beans. I distincly remember buying some but you will remember that I couldn’t find them. Anyway, once I’d emptied Caliburn I found an IKEA bag with the missing articles – together with some Soya desserts, dated 22 December 2014. They went in the bin.

I had another chat with Cecile afterwards and then sat down to watch a film. Tonight’s film was the whimsical John Wayne comedy McLintock!.

A delightful film, even if the picture quality is very poor – due to the fact that it’s out of copyright and so the original studio copies have long been lost. All that remain are second- and third-hand copies, and we are lucky to have those.

It’s another one of these John Wayne films where everyone is intent on having a good time, on screen as well as off-screen, and the fight scene is one of the inspirations for the fight in Mel Brooks’ Blazing Saddles.

It’s full of all kinds of memorable quotes, but you’ll need to buy the film to listen to them for yourself. Make sure you buy the full (122 minute) version and not the cut-down 90-minute TV edition, which cuts out half the plot, and don’t complain about the wretched quality because it’s all that is available.

For tea, I made another mega-curry of green pepper and lentils. There’s enough for three more days too which is good. It means that I don’t have to exert myself so much for the rest of the week.

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Saturday 14th March 2015 – WHAT? ME?

Working on the house on a Saturday morning?

Yes, make a note of this because it doesn’t happen every week, or every year come to that. But running behind, and having lost half a day on Thursday, I need to catch up otherwise i’m going to be here for ever.

But it wasn’t an early start by any means.

I woke up this morning to a crash on the roof as if the chimney had blown off. But what had happened was that a pile of snow had slid off the roof light onto the tiles. Yes, we had a pile of snow during the night and it was cold in here.

So that was enough for me. Never mind the alarm, I turned over and went back to sleep where I remained until 10:00.

painted bedroom wall les guis virlet puy de dome franceAfter breakfast, I went downstairs and finished off the second coat of paint on the wall in the bedroom. And as I say it myself, it doesn’t look too bad at all, although a third coat would help matters greatly.

Cecile came round in the late afternoon and stayed for a good two hours while she sorted out a few things. And now I’m back up here with the fire on to keep warm. No footy tonight so I’m staying in.

Tomorrow, Pionsat’s 2nd XI are playing just down the road at le Quartier. I’ll have a run out around there.

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Friday 13th March 2015 – I HAD A …

crazy paving les guis virlet puy de dome france… delivery this morning. Terry came round.

I have a patch of uneven ground underneath the window of the ground floor outside. I intend to build a stone wall to a level and then infill with all of the brick ends and rubble that is hangong around here and then pave it over to make a little terrace.

The crazy paving is much cheaper if you buy it by the pallet rather than by the square metre, and Terry wanted half a load for a job he’s doing. It made sense to me to buy the other half and keep it here for a year or so until I need it.

Consequently I didn’t start on the painting of the bedroom until about 11:30, but by 14:20 I’d finished it all. It’s not very good though as it’s thin and patchy. It’s not spreading too well.

After my lunch break (and a little siesta) I went back out and put the second coat on the paintwork that I had done yesterday. As it looks as if I’m going to have to put three coats on, I thinnned it out with another 2 litres of white paint and it now looks like a lovely custard colour.

I went down to Pionsat for the shopping this evening, and on the way back I had to call at Rob and Nicolette’s. It seems that, for some reason best known to herself, the boulangère left my bread there instead of at my house.

Not sure what’s happening there.

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Thursday 12th March 2015 – I MADE THE BEST EVER …

… fire that I have ever made at Cecile’s today. It burned beutifully and did everything that it was supposed to do. I only wish that it had burned like that during the bitter winter of 2013.

Mind you, it wasn’t easy.

I lit the fire as soon as I went round there, and promptly filled the house with a thick oily smoke. Nothing was coming out of the chimney at all.

I had to let the fire burn itself out (by which time Cecile and her mother had arrived) and then I dismantled the chimney pipes. And no-one was more surprised than me when, after much ramming, prodding and poking, an enormous dead bird fell out. It really was a monster bird and he was well-wedged in the chimney. I’ve no idea how come he came to be stuck there.

Reassembling the chimney pipes was much more complicated, and we ended up moving the stove so that the pipes lined up better. And it was during this manoeuvre that I was drowned in a load of soot (wo much for my gorgeous heated shower in the verandah this lunchtime).

It turns out that with the dead bird blocking the chimney, the soot had falled into the trap and this was blocked solid. Chiseling it all out, I noticed that was a small vent in the trap, presumably to provide an updraught for lifting the smoke up. Unblocking and cleaning the chimney pipes solved many of the problems, but I reckon that it was cleaning out the vent in the trap that gave it the finishing touch.

Yes, the best fire that I have ever seen out there at La Batisse.

So what was I up to this morning then?

painting bedroom wall les guis virlet puy de dome franceI’ve started to put the paint on the wall this morning. Everywhere that I papered on Tuesday now has the first coat of paint.

It’s lighter than the paint colour on the landing. That’s because I found another 5-litre tub of white paint, so I mixed three litres of that into the yellow. It looks much better now and I can’t wait to see it with the second coat on.

I had enough time to go round and mask off the rest of the bedroom. That’s a task well-done and so I can crack on with the rest of the first coat tomorrow

And then I had my lovely shower.

I also found time to do a machine-load of washing at Cecile’s, for which I’m grateful.

And it is nice to see Cecile and her mum again after all of this time.

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Thursday 12th February 2015 – I HAD A LATE START …

… today. I had about 10 minutes spare before I needed to start work qo I started on something really quick – and it was 11:10 by the time I finished.

But never mind – I still managed to accomplish everything that I had planned for today, and even found time to draw up a list of tasks to do before the bedroom can be called finished. There’s 15 on the list (and I’ve just thought of one more too) but I’ve already completed one of them so it’s not too bad.

First thing today was to sand off all of the remaining filler in the joints of the plasterboard. And now, of course, I look like a snowman … "snowPERSON" – ed. Once that had been done, I could put the second coat of paint on the landing wall. I still don’t like the colour but it went on good and thick and at 20:00 it was still wet.It’s going to take a while today.

This afternoon I had to fetch in a pile of wood as I’ve run out, and then I set to work on the second layer of filler on the plasterboard joints on the wall in the bedroom. It ddin’t take too much either – I must be getting good at this. Finally, I took off all of the masking on the landing and now I can get into the cupboard there and start putting stuff away.

I didn’t know what to make for tea tonight but just messing around aimlessly with a few bits and pieces here and rhere and I ended up with another mega-meal – this time of potato and lentil. It was nice, but it would have been even nicer had I had some onions handy, and there’s enough for four meals. So that’s problem solved until next week.

Tomorrow, I’ll be sanding down the second lot of filler, but then nothing’s going to happen to that for a while so I can leave it at that. I’ll also be emptying the wardrobe and painting that with crepi, ready to start fitting the shelves. I’m intrigued to see how far I can reach tomorrow.

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Wednesday 11th February 2015 – THIS MUST BE SOMETHING OF A RECORD

Today, I had a massive 169 amp-hours of excess solar energy and the water temperature in the home-made 12-volt immersion heater that I use as a dump load went off the scale (ie more than 70°C). There has never been that much surplus solar energy in the month of February – in fact we would not find too many days in July and August where we would have more than that.

That gives you some idea of what today wad like. The temperature outside reached 15.1°C and this was the first day for I don’t know how long when the temperature in my attic rose during the day rather than fell.

The increase in temperature prompted me into action and first job that I tackled was to paint the landing. But that wasn’t how it panned out, as I dropped my pliers into the 8 litres of white paint. They will be nice and pretty when I finally get down to the bottom of the tub and can fish them out. But that’s not going to be for a while yet.

landing painted yellow les guis virlet puy de dome franceSo here we are. You can’t really see things very well in the landing, but here’s the first coat of yellow paint on the wall. This is basically 8 litres of white emulsion and a tube of yellow paint pigment.

It’s not brilliant, but it will look much better tomorrow after I have done the second coat. And I don’t really like the colour – it’s come out much darker than I was expecting and much darker than what I wanted.

But never mind. it’s on and it’s staying on.

osb wall wardrobe s les guis virlet puy de dome franceAfter lunch, I started on the second piece of OSB for the end wall of the wardrobe. That eventually went into place with a little bit of manoeuvring and fine adjustment, and it won’t be coming out again.

It’s a different colour than the rest, due to the fact that I didn’t have enough OSB in the house and had to go outside and scrounge a piece that I had been using as part of the false floor in Caliburn. But as it’s being coated in crepi, it won’t make much of a difference.

This afternoon, after a few other bits and pieces that I had to do, I made use of the surplus solar energy and started to sand down the plasterboard. That took ages and I’ve only done about half of it, but the sandpaper on the sander split itself, at exactly 18:05, and I took that as being the signal to knock off for the day.

And those falafel balls and oven chips for tea were delicious again.

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Thursday 30th August 2012 – I DIDN’T DO …

… anything like as much as I was going to do today.

I was up early and spent a few hours on the computer as usual, but it was after that that it all started to go wrong

Finding a fully-charged battery for the Hitachi SDS drill was the first issue that I had, and once I’d managed that, then drilling the brick pillars has caused some of the bricks to split. That’s annoying to say the least.

But anyway the window frames are fitted and that’s something. Next plan was to fit the fascia boards to the end of the chevrons on the lean-to,

However, in an astounding achievement the type of which surely only I can be capable, it seems that having cut the wood to the right length, I somehow have managed to discard the piece that I want and I’ve painted the off-cut instead.

As Kenneth Williams once famously said, “I’m often taken aback by my own brilliance”

I didn’t get much done after lunch as the phone rang. The handbrake on Marianne’s son’s car has ceased to function and so could I look at it.

He brought it round and I dismantled the rear end (brake drums held on by the wheel bearings, how I hate that!) to find that the auto adjusters aren’t working. So no surprise as the handbrake needs 12 clicks to work.

I reset the adjusters but that didn’t do much so crawling underneath the car, it turns out that the cable adjuster (there’s one of them too) has slipped out of position. I reset that and now the brakes will stop that little Twingo on a sixpence.

But that cable is totally weird. Most cars have one single cable and there’s a slider at the centre of tha cable that’s attached to the handbrake arm so that the brakes pull evenly, and when you work the manual adjuster, the adjuster works on both brakes.

But not the Twingo.

There’s no slider at all but just a single fitting on the end of the handbrake arm, and two cables, one for each rear brake on each side.

Consequently although moving the manual adjuster will tighten up the cable, it doesn’t equalise the brakes. If one side is lack, then tightening up the cable adjuster will over-tighten the good side.

It took us ages therefore to adjust the brakes correctly, setting up the automatic adjusters individually by trial and error until they were equal, and then tightening up the cable adjuster.

And then of course we had the issue of refitting the hubs and bearings, and torquing up the nuts. That’s something I really hate doing.

Back on the lean-to afterwards (just as well I finished the car as we had a torrential storm straight afterwards), I’ve fitted one window pane (one of them survived having a ladder thrown on it) and the second one is ready to cut.

But by this time, it was 19:00 and I was well fed up, so I called it a day.

And tea tonight? Courgette and lentil curry. You can see that things are going berserk in the garden right now.

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Tuesday 28th August 2012 – DESPITE MY …

… early night last night, I somehow managed to sleep right through the alarms this morning.

It was 09:22 when I finally heaved myself out of my stinking pit. It’s been quite a while since I’ve done that, hasn’t it

It was raining too – which makes a nice change. It’s been a while since I’ve had any. But it didn’t rain for long, but long enough to put 100 litres or so into the water butts and I am grateful for that.

The garden and my water butts needed it.

Despite this being a day where I was at home, I didn’t do any pointing at all.

I have done 75% of the painting of the woodwork for the window frames though – two coats on one side and one on the other – I’ll have to do the second one on there before I fit it all in

And while I was waiting for the coats of paint to dry, I was doing other things.

home grown potatoes beans carrots les guis virlet puy de dome franceOne of the things that I did do was to dig up some carrots and pull some beans. Proof, if any were needed, that thanks to all of Rosemary’s help my garden is coming up with the goods..

Add them to the new potatoes that I uprooted the other day, and then some cauliflower that I bought on Saturday, a veggie-burger fried with onion and then some vegan cheese sauce, it was absolutely gorgeous.

What a wonderful tea it all was too!

Another thing that I did was to empty Caliburn out. His load bed is now empty. I’m taking Rosemary to Brico Depot tomorrow and also to Lapeyre so I may well need the space.

I need some more guttering and also some more glass to replace that which … errr … met with an accident, and I need a very narrow springy trowel to replace the one that I broke here on the wall.

Finally, I’ve been tidying up downstairs too looking for my mobile phone which I appear to have mislaid somewhere. I didn’t find that but I did find the missing LED light strips, which pleased me greatly.

I’ve also thrown away about 1 big bin-liner full of rubbish – and there’s plenty more to go at too.

That took me to 19:00 and then I knocked off.

Montlucon tomorrow and then Thursday I can get cracking again.

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Monday 13th August 2012 – AND SO …

… after my lazy day yesterday, today it’s back to work.

And with a vengeance too.

collapsed lean-to les guis virlet puy de dome franceThis is the next stage of Project Collapsed Lean-to.

You can see the lean-to wall just there and how it’s leaning away from the house wall  and also bulging out at the far end.

All of that needs to be pointed, and it isn’t easy because some of those stones are just hanging in there thanks to a wing and a prayer, and a few have already gone.

It’s not the easiest job that I’ve ever done, and I have to be careful because teasing out some of the rotten cement infill also tends to tease out some of the stones.

Anyway, I’ve cleared away some of the brambles and so on, and then painted the woodwork with the first coat. I’ve also pointed a few square metres of wall – starting from the top and working down so that I can make sure that it’s all properly sealed in before I pull the cement away from underneath.

Like I said – it isn’t easy and I reckon that it’s going to take me longer than anticipated – always provided that the wall doesn’t fall down on my head while I’m doing it or anything else stupid like that.

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Thursday 9th August 2012 – WHAT A GLORIOUS DAY!

And I’m not just talking about the weather either, although that was certainly superb.

This morning was an early start and that found me in Montaigut-en-Combraille with Terry and Rob where we spent a pleasant 90 minutes visiting a semi-derelict building in the town.

We have big plans for this – well, actually we don’t, but the whole purpose of being there this morning was to measure it up and then draw up big plans for it.
Never mind a cunning plan, we will have several cunning plans for this place.

While Terry and Rob went off to chat amongst themselves I went off to the mairie to have a chat with the mayor of Montaigut-en-Combraille about what our intentions are.

Surprisingly (or maybe not, because times are changing in France when there is a question of foreign money being invested in these small semi-abandoned rural towns) she was quite co-operative and gave me loads of help, even introducing me to her deputy who was the kind of person who would really take an interest in this kind of project.

Back home, I started to turf out of the lean-to all of the accumulated breeze blocks, large stones and so on that I won’t be using again up there so that there would be plenty of space for me to move around.

But then the weather intervened – in the sense that by 13:00 the batteries were fully-charged and the water was heating up.

With all of this surplus energy around, out came the big drill and YESSSSSSSSSSS I finally pushed the core drill right through the wall and into the house.

I’ve even managed to feed the plastic pipe through the wall and so now, next time that it’s too wet to work, I’ll be running three sets of cables through the tube – a 230-volt power line, a 12-volt power line and a 12-volt light line, and then starting to wire everything up

This afternoon I was round at Liz and Terry’s doing the rear brakes on her car. Pretty straightforward of course but I was having issues with fitting the springs what with a lime burn on my thumb – how I managed that on Monday after all this time without one is another one of those total mysteries.

So tomorrow I’ll be fitting the woodwork for the windows and painting it all (I still have tons of this excellent LIDL wood treatment stuff), and then sorting out some wood to make a fascia panel across the exposed ends of the roof chevrons to keep the weather out of the ends of the chevrons.

That wood will be painted too.

I’ll measure up for the glass fit what guttering that I have lying around, and then on Saturday I’ll go into Commentry to buy the glass and the rest of the guttering.

Coming on in leaps and bounds now!

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Friday 25th November 2011 – YOU WOULD HAVE BEEN IN STITCHES …

CUTTING DOWN CONIFER TREES les guid virlet puy de dome france… watching me cut down the conifers at the front of the barn this afternoon.

But I’m not in stitches – I’m in staoles.

6 of them!

All across the top of my head.

I did something today that I vowed that I would never do – and that is to use a power tool to cut down a tree. When you are sawing away by hand, you can feel the tree start to give and you have plenty of time to move out of the way as it slowly keels over.

But with a power tool you can’t feel it and it takes you by surprise. And that’s not good if you are 3 metres up a ladder.

So it caught me under the chin, lifted me off the ladder and dropped me on the floor where my head struck the trailer with a glancing blow.

But I’m inpressed with that Ryobi 18-volt saw that I bought in the USA last year (almost as impressed, Rhys, as I am with my galvanised steel dustbin). It didn’t take long at all to go through this tree.

So let’s look on the positive side.

I was bleeding everywhere and so I went to Rob and Nicolette’s to get Nicolette to look at it as I couldn’t see anything of course. One look from her and Rob was detailed to drive me to Montlucon.

We waited for a couple of hours there (and I chatted to the father of one of the FC Pionsat St Hilaire footballers who had been admitted following a car accident) and then I was examined and stapled up.

What a waste of time that was, though. I have a stapler at home and Rob could have done that without having to waste 4 hours of his time. But I was grateful for his help – it’s nice to have good neighbours.

Of course we had all of the old jokes – “the Doctor examined your head but found nothing” and all that kind of thing.

But one piece of optimism is that many things work better if you give them a kick or if you bang them. I wonder if that will work for me now.

puy de dome franceWhat makes it worse was that I was only cutting down the trees for something to do while I was waiting for some paint to dry. It was so nice again today that I gathered up all of the pieces of wood from the greenhouse and I’ve painted them with a couple of coats of wood treatment and the first coat of the wood staining.

And I was only doing that because I can’t do the roof on the lean-to yet – the scaffolding is in the way.

I was going to give it all a second coat this evening and then start to assemble it tomorrow but badger that. I’m going to have a day off tomorrow.

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Sunday 6th February 2011 – Sunday is a day of rest …

 … as I have said many times before. And so with no alarm clock and no nothing at all I managed to stay in bed until as late as 09:15 which is something of a record.

With a leisurely morning, I carried on working on my website and in particular the pages on the Trans-Labrador Highway. And I’ve now managed to reach Mount Sterling, which is about 20 miles from Goose Bay. That means I’m almost half-way around on my travels. It’s quite a long road, you know.

After lunch, Liz and I decided to change my habits of a lifetime and work in the afternoon. After all, the quicker you start, the quicker you finish. And so now the bedroom door and ceiling are finished. Tomorrow we can put the first coat of paint on the walls.

Tonight though has been something of a major disappointment. It’s the Superbowl and the Packers, who I have followed faithfully for the last 20 years, have made it. But the US Government has gone berserk and every internet channel that I have found that might be carrying the game has either been suspended, usurped by, of all people, the Department of Homeland Security, or absorbed by the NFL.

But its the usurpation by the DHS that is the most frightening. Big business has all the legal guns at its disposal everywhere in the world, but as well as that, in Great Satan it can summon up the Government to do its dirty work for it at the taxpayers’ expense. Even websites in other countries have had their domain names taken over and closed down, with ICANN meekly folding up at the merest suggestion of US Government pressure. It seems that no-one is safe from the domination of Great Satan, no matter where they are. Free speech is an illusion these days.

I did manage to catch 5 minutes of the warm up, where they were interviewing a member of Great Satan’s Armed Farces. He said that they were in Afghanistan “to keep our country (that is – Great Satan) free”.  He’s living under an illusion as well.

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Friday 4th February 2011 – We are making some good progress right now

Terry has spent all day tiling in the bathroom and he’s making some splendid progress. It’s looking a world different that it did this time last week and I’m really impressed.

Liz and I spent all day in the third bedroom. We started off by putting the second coat of paint on the woodwork, and then carried on with the wallpapering. Liz kept on encouraging me when I was starting to flag, and we managed in the end to do all of it, even the fiddly bits that take all the time. It’s much better when you have someone to help to motivate you.

So not much to write about, but a great deal of work done. We are all thoroughly exhausted and I’m off to bed in a minute. But I don’t imagine I’ll get much sleep. There’s been a howling gale blowing here all day and some of the gusts are shaking the windows, making quite a noise. It’s been ages since I’ve seen a wind quite like this.

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Thursday 3rd February 2011 – So how did we do today then?

We made buckets of progress today.

This morning I had to go shopping to pick up the tiles that were now in stock. We also needed some tile cement (and lots of it), a new tiling trowel for Terry, some more white gloss paint and a couple of other things. While I was away, Liz put a coat of paint on the bedroom ceiling and Terry made a start on the tiling in the bathroom.

Once I returned, Terry launched himself into the tiling and kept at it all day. Liz and I painted all of the woodwork in the bedroom with the white gloss. Yes – me – painting things white. Whatever next?

Towards the end of the afternoon Liz started on a second coat on the ceiling and I began the wallpapering. I’m using that fibreglass wallpaper as I can do that – it doesn’t take much effort – and it hides all of the defects. I’ve put three drops onto the wall before the light went so I’ll finish it off tomorrow. And when it’s all done, the plan is then to paint it with emulsion. Once that’s done we can refit the radiator and do the floor and that will be that room finished. We can then move the living room into there and then do the living room.

Terry kept going until 18:45 and he’s done an impressive job in there. The wall is about half-done, so I gave him the rest of the day off and we finished by demolishing a pile of Liz’s lentil-burgers..

Tomorrow we’ll all be back at it.

-3