Tag Archives: decorating

Labours of love?

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I’m sitting in the only space in the house that isn’t either covered in dust or stacked with furniture… another renovation day dawns!

Why is it that however modestly your building project begins, it will inevitably grow legs and morph itself into a full blown construction job? And not only will it go on far longer than predicted, it will also come with a hefty price tag.

In early January we set out to make a few improvements to one half of the house… two months on and I’ve just sat down after loading up scraps of carpet into five bin liners. I’m sitting down because I’m not attracted by the next job, which involves lugging each of the bags to the garage through the Devon drizzle. So, instead I’m playing on my phone.. very “millennial” I know!

This building lark should be very familiar to me after many years working on a number of building projects both in our own homes and more recently in the homes of our children.
So, what have I learned?

Concrete burns are a thing. After a session mixing concrete on a hot day a couple of years ago, part of my over enthusiastic shovel fulls into the bucket must have slid down the inside of my wellies, below my cut offs. Several hours later I discovered a red patch on my leg that started to blister… long story, but I ended up with quite a serious concrete burn which took some time to heal and was quite painful. It turns out the burning chemical in concrete goes on working – eating into your skin – unless it’s rinsed off quickly. So beware!

Bricklaying is an art. During Easter 2020 while many of us enjoyed the sunshine amidst the first pandemic lockdown, our daughter-in-law taught herself how to build a wall, to finish off their house extension which had been started a few months earlier. Her self-taught skills left us all in awe – because it wasn’t an ordinary wall. The completed stepped back design, specified by our architect son, in traditional London stock bricks, is a work of art. And still standing!

Plumbing can be fun. One of our very dearest friends is a plumber who mixes his work with fun. When he visited us for various plumbing jobs he used to create musical instruments from left over copper pipes for the children to play with during his tea break. My own forays into plumbing began in 2020 assisting with the first London house renovation/rebuild. A couple of years on I had a chance to see if I’d remembered the skills I’d picked up, working on another house renovation, this time with our youngest son and his wife. Whether it was laying plastic pipes up walls or under floorboards, attempting to straighten the bendy tubes without kinking them, labelling hot and cold and fitting valves and stoppers – it was fiddly and sometimes frustrating. But it also had its funny moments – if you didn’t laugh you’d cry… In the end it was quite satisfying to think that we had laid the pipes and when the real plumber came to test the system they didn’t leak!

And then there’s the dust. Dust gets everywhere, even in the rooms you’ve sealed off. Also it lives forever. A few days after you’ve cleaned everywhere thoroughly, you wake up to find more has landed overnight, covering everything with a white film. This time I had forgotten the dust. Perhaps I just wanted to blank it out, thinking it will be less this time, as it’s in the other half of the house and there’s a big door between us… but it is back. Dust on the tables, on the cups on the shelf, even on the hoover, and it goes on. Even if you cover everything with dust sheets or polythene, it finds a way in. There is no escaping it, so if you are embarking on a building project it might be time to embrace the dusty look and think of desert storms and living in shades of grey for a while.

Although I have been a concrete mixer, a plumber’s mate, a roof resin mixer and a wall insulation fitter in the past – I am now mostly a cleaner and a decorator. These are lower risk roles, but ones which have a degree of satisfaction for a few hours at least. 

My dream is to see all the building materials packed away, furniture unstacked and being able to clean and decorate the new rooms at last, so that we can welcome some guests. 

Knowing how things go, it may be a few weeks yet, so I will slide on my “ear defenders” and get back to sweeping up another dusty room, with dreams of Spring and potting out flowers to drown out the noise of the drills and electric saws.

Goodbye Magnolia

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Blue sky. Turquoise sea. White walls. Not a spot of Magnolia in sight, which is some kind of atonement for the most stressful final ‘March out’ last week.

Now I’m lying in a white washed room listening to the water lapping on the shore, just metres from our blue shuttered doors. Thankfully it’s all behind us and almost forgotten.

There’s nothing like packing your rucksack and hopping between Greek islands to put a bit of distance between us and those frustrating military systems.

We’re part way through our Greek summer adventure (part 1) and have sampled the delights of the magical island of Santorini. We enjoyed a roof top pool with a panoramic view and sipped G&Ts on our balcony looking down on cruise ships and yachts floating past beneath the soaring cliffs of the volcanic island. We also tried out the crazy local buses to the old town of Oia and wandered the paved narrow streets filled with blue and white pottery and scarves.

On Friday we set sail for Paros on our second ferry. I felt quite smug skipping past other foot passengers struggling with huge suitcases as I mounted the stairs, very happy with my rucksack. I was slightly less impressed a few hours later carrying food and water, plus the rucksack, and attempting to get on the water taxi to our beach. We perched on the front of the little boat with two girls and I was pleased that I managed the jump off onto a concrete jetty without a drama. We were almost there.

We had hoped to be collected by our Air BnB host, but her car was off the road, so we were on foot. It wasn’t far along the beach, but the bags and the rucksack were getting a bit heavy in 32 degrees plus. I tried to match the giant strides of my travelling companion ahead, marching beside the sea, with a row of sun beds on the left. “Not far now,” I thought. Seconds later I was flying headlong onto the sand, as a small trip sent me face first onto the beach. There was no chance to rebalance as the weight of my rucksack sent me hurtling forward. I was unhurt, but embarrassed, as a walnut tanned man came forward to ask if I was OK. Didn’t I know there was an age limit for wearing a rucksack? I laughed and struggled to my feet unaided and followed the long strider, who was totally unaware of my fall!

Dropping the bags beside a tree below a pretty blue shuttered building, I checked my phone for our host’s number and picked up a message from her to say she could pick us up after all, as she had managed to borrow another car! The phone had been off to save the battery… Oh dear, we’re here now anyway! She kindly carried my shopping into the room, which had another view of turquoise water, framed by a line of trees and pink flowered shrubs.

Having spent a large proportion of our budget on eating, drinking and transport in Santorini, we counted out the remaining cash on the bed. We needed to economise a little, so we stored away our food and downed some water. Luckily we had a bottle of duty free gin to keep our spirits up!

The first night we enjoyed a take away delivered to the door, which we managed to make last for two days. We would splash out on a frappe later – with 2 straws!

Looking at our beautifully white washed walls, I can only smile now about last week’s ‘March out’ fiasco, which left us both seething, but has now become something of a joke! Who will be first to spot something painted magnolia?

When we moved into our army house almost four years ago, we’d asked permission to paint a few rooms white. At the time the man in charge had said it was fine, and that we didn’t have to return them to army standard magnolia, as long as it was a neutral colour. We’ve really enjoyed our fresh white walls, looking out on the rolling hills and the sea beyond.

At the ‘March out’, the person checking the house shook his head and announced that all the rooms painted white must be returned to magnolia or we would be charged. No amount of explaining what we’d been told would do – we had nothing in writing and the man in question had now left his post.

The house, he admitted, was spotless and a good deal cleaner than when we’d taken it over. The white washed rooms looked crisp and fresh, but they were not “army issue” magnolia, so unless we painted them back there would be money to pay for redecorating. Adding insult to injury the same man had visited our quarter a few weeks earlier to check for any issues and told us all that needed doing was to tidy up the garden and do our best with limescale in the bathrooms. He had failed to spot the offending white walls, which would have given us a chance to redecorate or time to fight our case.

What should we do? On one of the hottest afternoons in June, the one of us that wears uniform asked him to return the next morning after we’d repainted. (The other one sulked and muttered about writing to the newspapers;) I have never engaged in decorating with such bad grace and I have never disliked the colour magnolia so much as I did that afternoon. After three days of solid and nail breaking scrubbing and cleaning in the house, we had planned an afternoon relaxing at our favourite beach. Instead we sweltered with rollers, paintbrushes and dust sheets, returning our rooms to a dull magnolia. The job was made even more infuriating knowing, as our neighbour pointed out, that the next occupants would probably prefer white walls.

It’s done now and thankfully the Greeks love white! You can be sure when we next need to choose colours for our home Magnolia will never be an option!