Originally posted February 27, 2007
For the next few weeks I am working more than usual and I know that I shall find it difficult to post and visit. So I have decided to rerun some of the posts that I wrote before my blog was read.
Last week my husband took the week off work to do some 'serious decorating' - his words not mine. The trouble was it was the wrong week. We have lived in this Victorian cottage for nearly three years and as the third anniversary of our move here looms, on 30 April, I have set that date as a deadline by which the main rooms have to be decorated and carpeted. If the deadline is not met I am getting professionals in to do the decorating. We are currently trying to decorate the main bedroom and the dining room.
We could not do anything with the bedroom because we are waiting for it to be replastered. Initially, we couldn't contact the plasterer and when we eventually did manage to contact him found that he was ill. Consequently, decorating the bedroom is on hold and the fitted bedroom that should have been fitted by now, has had to be postponed.
The dining room we can barely get into, let alone decorate. Three weeks ago, we had a carpet fitted in the living room, after nearly three years of waiting - whilst we used the living room as a store room and all sorts of other things. The carpet which came from a well known (I think) carpet store, has a mark in front of the fireplace and several other faults. So the furniture from the living room is in the dining room whilst we wait for an independent carpet inspector to examine the carpet.
The inside of the cottage is like an obstacle course. It is actually two cottages knocked into one but at the moment it feels more like one cottage knocked into two, with the furniture from the rooms that are supposedly being decorated in the rooms that aren't being decorated. Instead of decorating we spent the week cutting up the tree, which the recent gales had blown on to my greenhouse, into fire wood.
This week my husband is back at work, away from home in his air-conditioned office, leaving me to juggle workmen and a part time job.