Sunday, 16 November

I was becoming very stressed about the sugar-soaping going so slowly [and, more probably, the tiredness/head-full-of-too-many-things feelings], as we were hoping to decorate behind the radiators [per Richard (the plumber)'s advice].  But if we can't manage to do that we can always take the radiators off the walls again, even if that means getting him back for a "re-tune" [balance?] after we've finished, and nothing absolutely has to happen before we move in, other than Richard providing us with a bath or shower, one sink or basin, and a source of hot water.

As we have decided to bite the bullet, and have sent off an immense cheque to British Gas, we suspect we have another few weeks leeway on the hot water front, at least.

We've lived in one room before whilst I've been decorating [and during the seemingly-endless floor stripping/finishing at Leander Road (for a while the sofa was on it's side in the kitchen)], and it's entirely do-able; and that was living in small flats.  With a whole house, we could do a floor at a time, and still be perfectly comfortable.  I think the lack of sleep caused by trying to work out what-happens-next at 4am has skewed my perspectives.  I know we're just going to keep plugging away at it until it's done!

And if we don't do any decorating before the spring, that won't be a problem either; Tim, the tree specialist, said not to do any making-good until after any root shrinkage has occurred this winter, so it could be a perfect excuse?  I was planning to try and get a coat of white emulsion everywhere [much less depressing than the damp-impregnated wallpaper], and the do the making-good when we've decided on colours, and just paint over relatively-recently "primed" walls then.  I want to watch how the light affects each room before deciding on tints/shades, and maybe even use some of the paint that Paul mentioned [Dulux, I think]  that really reflects the light around a room.

We ended up delaying our start, as I wanted to get a "plan of action" sorted out [so far we've been "running to stand still" as our 'mission statement', but I think now it is time to start prioritising].  I think we're going to forget about the bathroom, and concentrate on replacing the soggy ceiling, and installing a shower and kitchen sink-units (and possibly tile throughout) in the utility room, .  We're trying to track down a plasterer today, and I'm hoping my brother will say yes to coming down and tiling.  As it will be only the "laundry room", we can source the cheapest plain white tiles and be happy with that as a result, I think [but reserve the right to change my mind!].

The loo [broken cistern, badly stained, incorrectly-fitted], can join the bathroom on the save-it-for-later pile; once the bathroom has been done, there will be another lavatory in the house, so taking the downstairs one out of commission won't cause any problems.  And we can tile, if we want, at that time.  We do need to tile the bathroom before using it, though, because of the wrong sort of plasterboard coupled with no plaster/paint on the walls; I would like to find some nice tiles, so this will give us longer to think about that and go shopping.

We finally got to work, this time the paper in the former bathroom was the target; it's vinyl, and was pretty tough to remove, and my shoulders were in a lot of pain from Saturday's hours with the scrubbing brush/green scratchy scourer.  I dipped in and out of helping David, took all the room measurements I wanted to, so that I can refer to the plan in future, and "played" with the gas stove, trying to decide on whether to deliberately offset the woodburner between the two doors in the lounge [short answer: "no"; long answer: it would end up bugging me no end, would probably have to be changed, and doing it "right" (a.k.a. symmetrically) in the first place would save a lot of future drama.  Already it feels like the right decision].  I had to drag David away from the steamer to look at hearth layouts [I'm moving breeze blocks around as a "pretend" hearth].

It was another really useful delay: we had planned to have the hearth span between the two openings, but realised that it would look better to have about 12" between the ends of the hearth and the doorways, and that will also reduce the chance of stubbing a toe if we entered the sitting room at too sharp an angle.

I don't think it will save us any money, as we have decided the central [deeper under the stove] section would look better being wider than the square I'd discussed with Nick.  As the cost of the slate is a very small part of the overall cost, it seems silly to 'spoil the ship for a ha'p'orth of tar'.  We haven't told Nick and Niall yet, but David has that on his to-do list.

We both diverted back to the vinyl in the utility room, and together managed to remove the last bits; now we're hoping the old glue that held the hardboard "tiles" sheets in place won't cause problems with the (real) tiles' adhesive sticking.  I've seen a heavier-duty scraper at B&Q, so might splash out on one of those to see if I can scrape more of the hardened gunk away.

I'm hopeful that only doing the shoulder-height and below work, my injury flare-up will be a temporary thing, and that the sander or steamer will work on the wallpaper paste, and I can scrape off the old glue.  A lot of finger crossing!

Today, I'm actually glad of a few days off, rather than feeling impatient to get back to work.