0 When renovation becomes maintenance

We have been living in the cottage for nearly eight years now and the renovation ought to be finished, but it isn't. There is still one bedroom left to do plus some odd jobs. We have put the bedroom off a few times as we could not face the upheaval involved. Eight years is the longest that we have lived anywhere during our married life and we are now having to redecorate the cottage which is something that we have not had to do to any of our previous houses. At the moment we are redecorating the kitchen which was the first room that we decorated after we moved in. Here is the ceiling with the beams taped up and ready for a fresh coat of paint.

I know that the Victorians did not have beams in their ceilings, neither did they have artexed ceilings. They are the legacy of the previous owners and would cost a small fortune to remove and change. So we have left them. Even if they are not authentic, they give the cottage character and are only in the downstairs rooms. Anyway, the Victorians did not have electric lights or central heating, but we would not think of living without such facilities today.

When we moved in the kitchen was usable but desperately dark and dated. There was a fitted freezer which did not work and a fitted oven which heated up even when it was switched off! We eventually found that the wiring to the oven was faulty. I do not think that anything had been done  to the kitchen for about 25 years. We started by having the kitchen rewired and new lights fitted. Then we had to have some plastering done. The dust, upheaval and general mess is now becoming a blur and this was the second new kitchen that we had had fitted as we had had one put into our previous house after extending it. Consequently we had learnt from some of the mistakes that we made the first time. One thing that I insisted on was that we ate our main meal out. Trying to cook a meal in a microwave is a nightmare. The only problem that I have never forgotten was that at the beginning of the fitting of the kitchen in the previous house, the electrician had said to me that he had never worked on a kitchen that did not have something missing.  I confidently said that maybe this would be a first, but it wasn't. We had everything but the hob! How did they manage to leave that out?

This time all that is needed is a good clean and a fresh coat of paint.  We are keeping the same colour scheme albeit with the walls a slightly different shade of green.