Just a minor problem...

Went over to the flat last night to continue decorating and found a note from downstairs neighbour informing us that yellow water had been dripping through the light fitting in his ceiling during the night. Discovered that during yesterday’s replacement of a broken floorboard, a previously-repaired pipe got a hole in it and most of the water in our central heating system has now made its way south. Bother. Said neighbour also took the opportunity to point out another leak coming from our balcony. Double bother. Pipe temporarily fixed, ceiling thankfully still intact – now just need to inform our landlord.

And the decorating goes on...

The pressure is on to get the flat finished – hopefully we will be handing the keys over in the next week or so. We were hoping to have it finished at the weekend, but having to empty out more stuff than anticipated from the loft has set progress back a little bit. On the plus side, most of the walls and ceilings are now painted – just the awkward bits in the kitchen, bathroom and hallway left to do and all the skirting boards (joy of joys – feel like I have painted miles of skirting board over the last three months!)

And yet another day of decorating...

Another busy day spent repainting the flat – have definitely got to the stage now when I am well and truly sick of decorating and am looking forward to finishing and putting down the paintbrushes for a while. We are about halfway through the decorating (which is good considering we’re at the halfway point time-wise as well!) – hopefully just a few more days to go and we can then hand the keys over and focus on settling into our new home and start unpacking some boxes as it feels a bit like we are living in cardboard city at the moment!

Back to the decorating...

Getting the house in order is taking a bit of a back seat at the moment and we are focusing on getting the flat repainted before we hand the keys back which means that we now spend our evenings getting covered in magnolia paint (hopefully some of it manages to get on the walls!). Fortunately this seems like it will be a quicker process than trying to get the house decorated – after two days, we have already painted the lounge and main bedroom – hopefully we will get it done soon and then we can settle in to our new home.

Putting a foot in it

With the cabling work going on, there are a few floorboards up in the bedrooms at the moment. Progress on the house was impeded slightly by Michael’s dad putting his foot through one of the gaps and right through the ceiling in the dining room. Fortunately I was not at home at this point and by the time I arrived home, the pieces of the ceiling had been retrieved and it all glued back together although it doesn’t look too good there right now! Michael has assured me that once it is filled and painted, it will look okay again.

Feeling the pressure

On the plus side, we’ve now finally settled on a date for The Big Move. So the pressure is really on now to get all the decorating finished (painting is pretty much all done, just got to finish the cabling and get the floorboards back down so the carpets can be laid) plus finish all of the packing back at the flat. Once we move, we have a flat to decorate before giving the keys back. We’ve started painting the doors – which means the flat is currently freezing because none of the rooms currently have the doors actually on them.

A bit on the blue side...

I wasn’t keen on the plain white downstairs bathroom. It needed a bit of colour and I thought a nice pale blue would be great. So I spent this evening painting. And when I finished, I look around... and hated it. It looked so much darker than the colour on the tin, and the room is just too small for that much colour. Sigh. It looks like I’ll be spending tomorrow afternoon painting it white again. Unless by some miracle, it dries to a much lighter colour and actually looks like I thought it would by the morning. Fingers crossed!

Decorating drags on...

Another Friday evening spent in paint-splattered dungarees continuing with the decorating. I feel like I have painted half a million doors (although there are only 12 in total plus 5 from the flat to do later as well) and seem to spend half my life with a paintbrush in my hand. The thought of having a ceremonial burning of all things decorating-related after all this is done is highly tempting but probably isn’t the safest thing to do, or the most environmentally-friendly for that matter. Must keep reminding myself that progress continues to be made and it won’t last forever!

Despairing over decorating

It’s the start of October, it feels like there is an endless amount of work still needing to be done on the new house and we were intending to move in by the end of the month as well as having repainted the flat before we hand the keys back. Today is one of those days where I begin to wonder if we will ever get there or if my life for the foreseeable future will just continue to be one endless round of work, decorating and sleep. Must keep reminding myself of how much has been achieved so far...

Getting there...

My two weeks of holiday are drawing to a close – just a couple of days left before I’m back at work. I’ve spent nearly all of the last fortnight at the house, painting and sanding. It’s now got to the stage where there aren’t quite enough things that I can do to last a full day which is just as well as I’ll be back to just having evenings available to work on the house. It feels like things are getting there – we’re still some way away from being able to move in properly but the end is in sight!

Tack attack

Given that I’m petite and Michael is tall, it seems logical that sanding and painting the skirting boards would end up being my job. It wasn’t so bad in the hallway where we have a nice wooden floor and it is a fairly easy job, but upstairs involves taking the carpet up and then shredding my fingers on carpet tacks (they look like they’ve been attacked by several small vampires) whilst trying to sand the skirting board down. Thank goodness for my father-in-law turning up with a small electric sander – much easier and results in less damage to my fingers.

In limbo

I feel like my life is in an “in limbo” phase at the moment. Dividing my time between two homes- the one I’m technically still living in and the one that I’m about to be living in. The decorating has reached the in-between phase – each day brings further progress but nothing is really complete as yet. I’m in a state of waiting – waiting for the decorating to progress to the point of being able to move some more stuff in, waiting for the moment when the new house finally becomes “home”. It’s not a very comfortable state to be in.

Holiday at the Costa Nueva Casa

Two weeks of annual leave are ahead of me and rest and relaxation are not very high on the agenda for my “staycation”. Two weeks free to focus on the decorating and keep it progressing so that we can hopefully move in properly soon. It’s getting there slowly – we have started “de-Kermiting” the hall and the bright green skirting boards and door frames are now gradually changing to white; painting the lounge is almost finished and we have now started painting the main bedroom. The bathroom is still a disaster zone but hopefully is becoming less so by the day.

Slow progress

Decorating has now reached the stage where the house looks like a disaster zone and despite the fact that I seem to constantly have a paintbrush in my hand, it doesn’t look like very much is changing very quickly. There still seems to be an awful lot left to do and all I want to do is get it finished so we can move in properly. I have to keep reminding myself that this will all be worth it; that the end result will look better than what was there before. The trouble is, I’m just a little impatient sometimes.

Painting in progress

We’re aiming to have our new house decorated and ready to move in to by the end of September so all our free time at the moment is spent at the house getting more decorating done. Having done very little decorating before, I’m having to learn quite quickly – thank goodness Michael and his parents have both done quite a lot before otherwise work would progress at a snail’s pace. Our height difference turns out to be quite useful with painting – Michael can do the top half of the walls easily and I can do the bottom half and skirting boards.

Painting and parking

Michael arrived back this evening in time to help out with some more decorating (the wallpaper in the bathroom has now been removed and the lounge ceiling has been painted so we are making progress). I took a break from decorating to go and pick him up from the airport. When I went to pay for my car parking, I noticed that the machine wasn’t accepting banknotes and so went to use another machine. Unfortunately in the time it took to put my ticket into the next machine, my parking time shifted into the next bracket which was quite annoying.

Minor disasters in decorating

Other than helping Michael to paint a bedroom in his student house, I’ve never actually done any decorating before so the prospect of redecorating a whole house is a little daunting to say the least. Still, being ready to rise to the challenge I borrowed a wallpaper steamer from the in-laws and got stripping in the bathroom (wallpaper stripping, in case further clarification is needed). All seemed to be going well until I started peeling what looked like a cardboard layer off the walls which I discovered meant I had gone too far and was stripping away the plasterboard. Oops.