Ho ho ho

A wee bit of Christmas cheer has come into the F. household, thanks to:
1. Second batch of Christmas cookies
2. Charity shop find (always puts me in a good mood)
3. The saddest Christmas tree to date.

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'Tree', of course, is being used rather loosely in this context, seeing as it's clippings from some one's hedge that we found on the walk today. Regardless, undoubtable holiday cheer.

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Redirecting energies...

One of the benefits of being passportless has been that we've been able to finish painting the living room.

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(Finally-symmetry)
As well as fix the around-the-window area and (even more excitingly) hang up some of the wonderful pictures we were given as a wedding present:

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From Briar Crescent

Even better, some of our friends have very kindly donated two black bookshelves to our decorating project. The CDs aren't organised yet, but at least they're out of their multiple shoe boxes.

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From Briar Crescent

And finally, the incorrect passport. Yes, Home Office, this is a passport; however, next time we would be greatful if you would send one that isn't clearly out of date.

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the hills

Today was a beautiful, sunny day, and as we were both home (me-working, L-enjoying his holidays), we decided to take a stroll on the hills behind our house.
Hills, as seen from our house:

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House, as seen from the hills:

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We borrowed the neighbour's dog and had a lovely stroll.

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From Briar Crescent

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(View from the other side of the hills--behold! the sea!)

What is it?

Recent trips to the local charity shops have been very successful. The most mysterious success so far, though, has been this glass bowl and lid/stand. I have plans for it, regardless of what it was originally intended to be, but I'm still very curious--what exactly is it?

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Any ideas?

The eBay rug

I have been searching high and low for an appropriately-priced rug to add a bit of homely warmth to the living room. There was a lovely Persian rug on eBay a few weeks ago that I missed by mere pence. But last week, I got lucky. The lady offered to post the rug, but I, picturing the poor postman struggling under its weight, offered to pick it up, provided it was over the weekend, 'so my husband can help'. We debated whether the rug would fit and debated if measuring the trunk would be necessary. Come Saturday, we both showed up at the seller's door....and she handed me a light, two foot square package. My stomach plummeted as I tried to remember if the description might have been in millimetres instead of centimetres.

However, as you can see, the rug is full sized, just a bit thinner and more supple than I thought it would be.

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From Briar Crescent

The overall effect is homely, in the best definition of the word:

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Orange you glad I painted you?

The living room has gone from bare plaster, to white, to a hint of colour over the past few weeks. We have an awful lot of rejected terracotta and orange colours that all turned out much too pink. But, I think we've finally found one that is appropriately orange.

All white:

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Pumpkin pie, anyone?

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We're still debating how to use the orange--definitely on either side of the fireplace. We both like the fireplace white. But what about the rest of the room? I have concerns that all orange would be overwhelming. White might be a bit too cold.....I'm thinking of ivory on the other walls, but then again, that might be a bit bland. Lukas's preferred option is to have orange again on the wall opposite the fireplace, but I'm worried the white-orange-white-orange might be a bit too reminiscent of a orange cream sickle. Watch this space...

We're also debating the fireplace mantle (my lovely eBay find). I've stripped off one layer of the dark lacquer that was on it, so now we rather like it. But is the overall effect better or worse with it? Hopefully, things will become clearer after Christmas.

Using thick paint for good, not evil

Stripping off the wallpaper in the hallway revealed several layers of chipped paint.

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Preliminary experiments with just painting over it showed that this option, whilst easy, would lead to less than desirable results. So, we debated getting specially formulated 'smoothing paint' or papering. Lukas, remembering the joys of removing wallpaper, made a convincing case for painting. This past weekend I finally got around to playing with it. The special paint is more, it turns out, like really smooth plaster than proper paint. In order to get the smooth effect, it came with a squeegee--the instructions being to paint the mixture on and then squeegee it off. Unfortunately, said squeegee was not only rather fickle, but also purple and pink. Much more macho tools were deemed to be both more effective and easier on the ego.

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Having said that, the initial painting on of the goop was great fun, and I found myself thinking, 'Ah, that's a cool texture. Maybe we should just leave it like this....' Fortunately, every time I went to the bathroom, the ceiling helpfully reminded me what textured paint ends up looking like:

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Lukas can rest assured that when he returns from his business trip, he'll come home to nicely smooth walls.

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Another room down

For the past three weeks, we've been fighting with the paint for the bedroom. We love the colour, but it has a nasty proclivity to go on the wall a slightly different shade each time we paint it. This wouldn't be a problem, except that there were a few areas that just needed a light touch-up. The light touch-up was so obvious, the entire wall needed to be repainted. And then the ceiling needed just a bit of defining with white....which happened to dribble down the wall, necessitating yet another complete re-paint.

But, finally, the bed has been set up, and we have another room to add to the list of 'mostly done rooms'.

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From Briar Crescent

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(Those of you pitying Lukas, stuck in a purple room, are assured that he likes the colour even more than I do, and believes the colour is really a shade of blue)

Food & drink

Having been hit hard by whatever cold/flu is circulating around, L and I have done little but fill the house up with tissues and cough drop wrappers. However, thankfully, the illness lifted a bit last week, so we were able to celebrate our first Thanksgiving here in style. Food preparations were absolutely glorious--all the counter space! Our beautiful oven! And I believe we had the best turkey yet...

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From Briar Crescent

(and we thought the living room was a bit small!)

With plenty of time on our fingers (hands being too lethargic to do much), we've been scouring eBay, where Lukas found us this brilliant globe:

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But wait! There's more!:

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Voila!

warmth

As would be expected, big plans for painting and cleaning up fell through when I fell ill. However, we have made some big, big progress on the fireplace, thanks to one of L.'s many cricketing contacts. A bit more expensive than Shaun-the-plasterers work, but all this is two days! Hopefully the overwhelming smell of drying plaster will lessen before tomorrow's Thanksgiving feast...

In the very beginning (mostly for Lukas's sake, so he'll stop asking me why we had to take in down in the first place):

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After L.'s demolition work last week:

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Cleaned out (I was tempted to keep it like this):

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Nixie's work, end of Day 1:

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Nixie's work, end of Day 2 (plus L.'s expert arranging):

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Not quite the roaring flames L. was picturing when we first began... but still very nice:

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Advances for the feet

Last weekend we made a bit of a impulse buy. We were going to get the shopping and noticed a carpet place in the same shopping area. We'd been talking about carpets, dreaming about the day when we could walk in our socks upstairs, should we so choose, our toes cushioned by something nice.

The carpets were 20% off, so what could we do? The chap came to measure on Tuesday and the carpet was laid on Friday. It's not the woolly glory I was picturing, but it's still amazing. And has turned us into truly responsible decorators. Today's task is painting our bedroom (yes, painting after carpeting--it was an impulse buy). New carpet was covered with old carpet, which was covered by plastic, which was covered by boards. Then the edges were very carefully taped. A far cry from last week's painting of the lounge, when paint was allowed to splatter more or less where it pleased. Tomorrow will reveal if these efforts were enough....

Upstairs bedrooms on Friday morning:

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Three hours later:

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Of dignity and delivery

One of the biggest problems living in Our Little Work in Progress has been the sheer amount of dirt, dust and paint that ends up on our clothes. Being (until today) washing machine-less, we've been forced to enter the real world looking scruffy. However, we've reached the end of our rope (and of moderately clean clothes supply), so today we gleefully headed to Curry's to pick ourselves up a washing machine.

It was glorious going up and down the aisles, testing doors and buttons. The Curry's saleslady was very pleasant. We settled on one we liked. And then the trouble began. Model was not in stock. Model was not in stock at other Exeter branch. Model could, however, be delivered. For a small sum of 9.95 GBP. Unless, of course, we wanted it before the 25th of November. In that case, we could get 'Express Next-Day Delivery' for a mere 19.95 GBP. Except, of course, it wouldn't be next day as it was after 2 pm. In fact, it wouldn't even be the day after next. [By this time, L. is a bit red and pacing. I, of course, am calm and cool]. Instead, we could look forward to 19.95 delivering our washing machine four days later.

Could Curry's not see the dust on my bum? The dirt on my elbows? The paint on my hem? And my thumb! Surely the sheer sadness of my bum thumb would move them? No such luck.

We pondered, we paced, we contemplated the sheer ridiculousness of 'Express, Next-Day Delivery'. In sum, it was too much. We gathered our credit cards and fled to Tesco to drowned our dirty sorrows in wine, pizzas and ice cream (yes, it was that serious). And what should we find at that most amazing of stores? Not only wine, pizzas and ice cream, but a beautiful, slightly cheaper washing machine, in stock and ready for us to take away tonight! Amazing! So, the day ended with a positive, soon to be much cleaner conclusion.

Appeased?

Well, the kitchen gods exacted their sacrificial flesh last night by means of a carnivorous vegetable peeler. Hopefully, the opening ceremonies are over and no more blood will be demanded.

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(Poor thumb--and on the first peel, too! The gruesome details involve a surprisingly large chunk of the tip, searching around for the peeled bit of flesh, a trip to the hospital with an appropriately concerned L., massive bandage, ice cream to ease the pain, and now many lectures on appropriate peeling techniques.)

Regarding the kitchen

I write this from our completed kitchen! Well, completed minus a little bit of trim painting...

How did we achieve this huge step forward, you might ask? With the 'worst storm in ten years' brewing outside on Friday night, L. and I made a last minute run to stock up on paint and then commenced a major painting session, ending with our exhausted falling into bed at 2.30 am. It was well worth it, because on Saturday, all we had to do was the second coat of touch-up, wait for it to dry, and then convince the upper cabinets that they really did want to go back on the walls.

This order of events was only slightly interrupted by an early-morning phone call from Barbara-the-Neighbour which informed us that our fence was flapping wildly in the wind. After several thwarted attempts to control the fence (goodbye, ugly flower pot), it was finally secured. The big bonus was that Barbara must have taken pity on our poor cold fingers and brought over a steaming bowl of stew for us later. Glorious!

Even more gloriously, we can now cook our own stew in our most beautiful of kitchens.

Kitchen before (admittedly, not too bad--though the green-blue was much more overwhelming than is shown in the photo):

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Kitchen during:

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Kitchen now, in all its glory:

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And finally, the hotpad that I created months ago from a holey pillow case in anticipation of this, hanging in its rightful place:

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