Tag Archives: wallpaper

Wednesday 11th March 2015 – I’VE FINISHED …

finished wallpapering bedroom les guis virlet puy de dome france … wallpapering the bedroom.

In fact, it didn’t take all that long. I was late going out to work but I made up for that by going for a late lunch. And in that four hours, I had put 6 drops of paper on the wall. One of them was complicated in that it had to be cut specially to go aroud the window, and abother one needed a couple of pattress holes cut in iit.

I crashed out at lunchtime – and I don’t mean a simple doze but a real crash and I was out for about an hour and a half. But again, I caught up by working late.

I put the final drops on after lunch – one full drop needed a couple of pattress holes cut in it, and the second drop needed cutting down in the width. But I’d left a bit on the second wall so that I could start the third wall in a corner, and the cut-off width went in there quite nicely with a littl trimming down.

To finish off, I masked off around where I’d wallpapered on Tuesday, so that I can make a good start on painting that tomorrow. And I’ll see how I get on with that before I have to go and warm up Cecile’s house?

-1

Tuesday 10th March 2015 – I’VE MADE A START …

… on the wallpapering today.

This morning, I spent a great deal of time tidying up in the bedroom, sweeping up all of the sawdust and plaster dust and moving a pile of stuff around. I’ve filled four bin liners of rubbish and there’s probably one or two more as well to go. Unfortunately the place doesn’t look much emptier, it just looks different and I’m still worrying where I’m going to put everything. The aim was to make a pathway all around the three walls that need wallpapering, so that I can move the scaffolding around.

And I’m glad that I’ve decided to put a new layer of flooring in, because some of the existing flooring is looking very creaky indeed.

wallpaper bedroom les guis virlet puy de dome franceOnce that had been done, I made a start on the wallpapering. I’m using this fibreglass wallpaper that covers all known imperfections (except mine of course) and I’ve put 5 drops onto the wall, meaning that one wall of the three is finished completely. Tomorrow I can finish off and then on Thursday, depending upon how I’m fixed for time, I can put the first coat of paint on.

-2

Monday 2nd February 2015 – WELL, THE SNOW …

… looked quite pretty this morning. Especially when the sun came out and we had a little bit of blue sky to play with. It made me quite glad that the first job that I did this morning was to clear the snow off the solar panels on the roof.

That’s quite an exciting task – I stand on a tall step stool and reach out of the roof light and with a long handled window cleaner blade I can reach all of the panels and push the snow over the back of the house.

That’s not a new idea either. I can remember, when I was very young, watching a television film where some Indians were firing flaming arrows into the thatched roof of a pioneer house, and the pioneer wad having to reach out of the roof and try to dislodge the arrows before the fire took hold. And I wish I knew which film it was for it made quite an impression on me.

The little bit of sun encouraged me to use the electric sander to sand off the filler that I had done on Saturday afternoon. And when I had done that, the next task was to make some room in the bedroom where I could set up the paste table. As you are well aware, that’s not the work of five minutes to tidy up wherever I’ve been.

Now that the paste table was in place, I could make a start on wallpapering the landing. And much to my very great surprise, by lunchtime I’d done all of that. This was quite astonishing.

After lunch, I did some more tidying up and I’ve filled three bin bags with rubbish out of the bedroom (and there’s plenty more to come). That led to making a start on putting the battens onto the stud wall so that I can put the plasterboard on there. I also spent a pleasant 15 minutes in the lean-to looking for the drywall pattresses that I need for the electricity.

This evening, I’ve made yet another pile of vegan aubergine and kidney bean whatsits. There’s enough for four days in the batch that I’ve made and now of course I have the shelves outside where I can leave the stuff in the cold.

In other news, I’ve had some very sad news this evening. Another one of my friends from University passed away at the weekend. She was a lovely girl, very nice, very intense and very good company but that was on a good day, and as her perceived problems mounted up, her good days became fewer and fewer.

About 12 months or so ago, she walked out of her life and a short while later, turned up in her native Portugal. Presumably, with the intention of finding comfort and consolation in the surroundings of her childhood. However it looks very much as if she was unable to find whatever it was that she was seeking and this led to the tragic events of this weekend. I hope that wherever she is, she’s found peace and comfort and is at rest.

-1

Tuesday 13th January 2015 – D’OHHHH!

It’s mystified me for quite a while – the subject of the wind turbine on the side of the house.

You may recall that just before I went to Canada in August I was up on the scaffolding at the front of the house tidying up all of the wiring and one of the things that I tidied up was the wiring to the Wind Turbine. I also fitted a charge controller, a timer and a data panel.

Returning from Canada after 7 weeks away, I was expecting to see a significant reading on the data panel and the timer, and no-one was more astonished than I was to see not a thing. That really confused me greatly.

I didn’t give it much thought after that, being preoccupied with other things, but I did notice while I was up on the scaffolding getting some tools the other day that there were two wires danging down from underneath the junction box. The thought immediately went through my mind that I must have forgotten to connect them up, and that was the explanation for nothing happening.

Today, with 20 minutes to spare before lunch and having promised to deal with a few odd jobs today, and especially with the I went up onto the scaffolding to connect up the wires.

Prising off the top of the junction box, I noticed that these two loose wites were supposed to be loose – they are the wires that will be connecting the third bank of solar panels in due course, and the wires connecting the wind turbine were properly connected up. At least, that’s what I thought at first, but closer inspection revealed nothing of the kind.

Don’t ask me what goes through my mind at certain moments, or whatever I must have been doing at the time, but somehow, despite the clearest indications and a great deal of effort being put into colour coding and all that kind of thing, I somehow managed to connect up the positive lead to the negative feed, and vice versa.

I stood and stared at this for about 10 minutes open-mouthed, and then disconnected everything and reconnected everything correctly. And almost immediately, the green power light that I had fixed into the junction box came on. Since then, I’ve had the old familiar sound of the wind turbine murmuring away in the background.

I really don’t understand what goes on in my mind sometimes, but it’s worrying.

During the night I’d been on my travels around the Holmes Chapel area of Cheshire, in XCL, my red Ford Cortina Mark 5 estate that lives in a lock-up in Montaigut, and I was up comparatively early this morning.

After breakfast I came across another “d’ohhhh!” moment too. It seems that I was premature in declaring that the wallpapering had finished. I’d missed a bit and so I had to deal with that first. Once that was done I had to vacuum up the dust on the stairs (I’m enjoying this soot sucker that I’ve converted into a vacuum cleaner) and then mask everywhere off. That took most of the rest of the morning.

After lunch I collected up a pile of wood, did some tidying up and tool collecting, and then in the last hour or so started work on the shower room floor. THat’s now all cut to size and ready for nailing down, sanding off and varnishing now.

Remember what I said yesterday about knocking off? Well, here I was at 18:00 with the floor only half-done, but regardless, I carried on working until it was finished off.

And in the water butt, following on the fractured tap there, the front water butt is now empty and ready for cleaning and a new tap fitting. But of course I don’t have a new tap (I should have bought one on Saturday, shouldn’t I?) so it’s a good job that I drew off those couple of buckets of water for a reserve supply

-1

Monday 12th January 2015 – WOO HOOOO!

Yes, I’ve finished the wallpaper in the stairwell this afternoon. It doesn’t look particularly pretty but at least it’s all on and it will be staying on now, and that is that.

I had something of a little lie-in this morning so it was about 10:30 when I started work. First job was to vacuum up the dust with the soot-sucker. It didn’t half clog up the filter, but I’ve had experience of this in the past and it didn’t take very long to sort it out.

And in news that will startle almost everyone, I didn’t knock off for lunch until 14:30 – 30 minutes after my usual time. Working later than the normal knocking-off time (18:00 in winter, 19:00 in summer) is not an unusual event, but to work on past the lunchtime break is absolutely unheard-of.

However today, it was 13:45, too early to knock off and a piece of blank wall looked so inviting. As I was on a roll, I threw caution to the winds and pushed on. And I’m glad that I did too, because after lunch and I cracked on, I was done by 17:30 and that was that.

I spent the remaining time doing a few odd jobs, including changing over the plug on the new table saw (I use British plugs and sockets here as you know, because the plugs are fused. By 18:15 I was done and dusted, and that was that.

I can’t paint the wallpaper for a day or two as the paste needs to dry thoroughly. It looks like Wednesday to make a start on that. Tomorrow therefore I’ll push on and do all of the masking-off and catch up with a couple of other jobs that need to be sorted out

0

Friday 9th January 2015 – REGULAR READERS OF THIS RUBBISH …

… will be astonished by this, but believe it or not, I’ve started to wallpaper the stairwell.

Despite the lack of electricity today (it was another grey, miserable day today) I cracked on with the sanding down with the electric sander, stopping for half an hour for the boulangère and tidying up in the barn while I was waiting.

stairwell sanded down les guis virlet puy de dome franceIt didn’t take as long as I was expecting to sand everything down with the electric sander. In fact, by lunchtime everything was done and I had even put another layer of filler where it was needed.

after lunch though, the second layer hadn’t dried fully so I couldn’t sand it down, so I cleaned up as best as I could at the moment. This was when I noticed that there were a couple of areas had turned out pretty well. As there was still an hour or so before I knocked off, I decided to bite the bullet and start the wallpapering.

I hate wallpapering, I really do. I’m not much good at it, and working in a confined space in a stairwell is not my idea of a good job. But no-one else will do it if I don’t, and so I prepared everything.

And turning back to a few days ago, I found out why that wallpaper wouldn’t stick – the xallpaper that I put on the little shelving space under the stairs. It was in fact clear varnish that I must have put at one time into an empty paste tub. I wish I had labelled everything because it’s not the first time that this has happened.

The second piece of wallpaper that I fitted was quite straightforward, but the rist was a nightmare. All of the dimensoions were different and I was there for half an hour trying to position it, fit it and cut it to shape. Eventually, after much binding in the marsh, I got it to fit something like, a fact that peased me greatly, and I was quite pleased with it by the time that I has finished.

So that was one of the two most difficult pieces in, and on Friday afternoon too. i’m getting ahead of myself here, aren’t I? I went down to do my shopping this evening at the Pionsat Intermarche with a spring in my step.

But I do hate wallpapering. i’ve always said that whoever invented decorating wants f*****g. Although Nerina seemed to be of the opinion that on our honeymoon all those years ago I said “whoever invented f*****g wants decorating”.

But I dunno.

0

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.

-1

Saturday 5th February 2011 – This gale is still howling away

It’s been going almost non-stop for over 48 hours and shows little sign of abating.And here we are trying to cut tiles and paint window frames and we’ve ended up with dust and paint everywhere.

Mind you, I have the making of a magnificent bathroom thanks to Liz’s artistic eyes and Terry’s workmanship. It’s certainly something. It might even be finished by Monday night and that will be real progress.

In the bedroom all of the woodwork is painted, we have wallpapered and there’s a couple of coats of paint on the ceiling, although there will be others as the ceiling is quite thirsty.

This afternoon I took Liz and Terry to the battlefield at Waterloo but there was far too much wind to make it possible to climb to the top of the Butte du Lion. And at the huge Carrefour at Mont-St Jean we did a week’s worth of shopping and spent a fortune. But it was worth is for I even found a supply of vegan cheese. And that doesn’t happen every day.

Then off to the big Brico where we spent another small fortune, but now we have all the wallpaper and paint that we need for here. I needed an operation for the removal of my wallet, and was given oxygen afterwards.

A major disappointment was that Chi-Chi’s, the really good Tex-Mex restaurant in Overijse, had closed down. Terry suggested a pizza, Liz fancied a fritkot, but once I had Tex-Mex on my mind that was that and we fought our way into Brussels city centre for the other Chi-Chi’s. Terry was suitably impressed with the roads in the city, of course. He reckons that they wouldn’t be out of place in Ougadougou or Dar-es-Salaam.

And what a good night it was in Chi-Chi’s – excellent service (none of the staff is Belgian), really good food, and a couple of South Americans entertaining the diners. It’s been a long time since I had such an enjoyable evening. Liz enjoyed her Mexican coffee and Terry loved his deep-fried ice-cream.

And so that was our day. And a good day it was too, with a good time being had by all. Tomorrow is a day of rest of course, and then back to the grindstone on Monday.

-3

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.

-3

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

Friday 30th October 2009 – I forgot …

wallpaper paste table attic… to take a photo of yeasterday’s efforts so I took one first thing this morning.

You can see my paste table – two trestles and a couple of bits of OSB, but saying that it’s a paste table is somewhat of an exaggeration seeing as what I’m doing is actually pasting the walls instead. So you might as well say that it’s a cutting table.

But this fibreglass wallpaper is awful and I hate it. It’s making me itch, which is one thing, and it’s dreadful quality stuff. But at least it’s cheap and easy to hang when you are on your own

But I’m useless at wallpapering and I hate doing it. I remember the time when the long-suffering Nerina asked me to help her to wallpaper and paint the walls in Gainsborough Road back in 1991.
“I hate decorating” I said. “Whoever invented decorating wants f***ing!“
“That’s not what you said on our wedding night” she replied. “You said that whoever invented f***ing wants decorating!”

12 volt LED light attic wallpaperThis is today’s photo and you can see that it’s taken in the evening as it’s dark outside, if you look through the door. The four LED lights give quite a pleasing effect to the room, don’t you think?

If you look closely you can see that all of the walls are now papered and ready for painting, which I may well do tomorrow seeing as there’s no footy this weekend.

And if you look closely you can’t see the scaffolding tower that has been up there since we had no roof on the premises back in July. With the now-redundant woodstove in position you can’t manoeuvre the scaffolding around the walls and in any case the step stool is a little higher and much easier to move around.

In the wooden boz is my bed-settee and I can’t wait to set it up. I’m looking forward to having my first night’s kip on it and that can be any day now.

-5