Painting

Because we are generally crap, I realised that the painting in our flat was Never Going to Finish. So I hired the cousin of a friend who is temporarily out of work to come and paint. Hoorah! And it looks great. He did the final coats in the bedroom (it needed TWO MORE. That means it needed FIVE COATS OF PAINT to cover up the faux Roman stucco effect lovely Nige had left us), painted the skirting boards and sanded/painted the door frames. Yay! Lovin' it.

Two weeks until the floor man comes.

I see you!

A couple of weeks ago I bought a big mirror from the salvage yard in Vauxhall. It was reclaimed from Selfridges when they did the place up a while back, and while it was lovely and large and (fairly) cheap, the colours are pretty garish. SO today I had some fun painting it black. It needs one more coat, but looks pretty good already! If only the boyfriend would allow me to operate a drill, I could put it up on the wall this week...

Painting

The living room and hallway are so close to being finished I can taste it. In the living room, just a stubborn blue patch remains. We discovered a whole load more wallpaper that needed to come off before we could start on the final part, but now we are so almost there. In the hallway, the undercoat is finished, and we just have around 1/2 of the overcoat remaining. Next weekend we might actually be able to move on to the bedroom, which we painted when we first moved, but in a shade of white that we are no longer happy with.

Before:
After:

More white walls

Ow

Finally we had a day of DIY. Oh but the pain. My thumbs hurt, my back is aching, my wrists feel funny... I am going to sleep extremely well tonight. BUT we did get some stuff done. I built a non-children sized chest of drawers (OMG no more folding underwear to make it fit!) and Steph painted a couple of the walls in the "blue room". Then we moved all of the clothing-related things (cupboards, clothes, shoes, etc) into the bedroom. The living room now looks about 10 times bigger, hurrah! Still loads to sort out though... a task for later on (or maybe tomorrow)(or maybe next week). Pics below.

SO...

Remember last week, when I said that we were going to finish the undercoat all in one weekend? Well, not so much. Sunday turned into a barbeque for me and Kew gardens for the boyfriend, and then this week I've been ill and the boyfriend has been out most every night so the painting kind of stalled a bit. BUT we are back on it. Almost done with the undercoat on the walls. Just a few little bits, the edges, and the ceiling to go. Oh, and we still have to strip 2 1/2 door frames and sand them all. But you know. Whatevs.


BBQ on a London high-rise balcony

The hallway

Painting in knackering. Almost finished with two walls. Taking a break for the rest of today. Tomorrow we will complete Coat One. It would take us less time, but we also have to do the ceiling. How the F we are going to do that, I don't know.

Painting the hallway

Stage one: painting the metal bits. I was all set to start stage two: painting the entire hallway, but we forgot to buy Turpentine and I don't want to paint if we can't clean the brushes (and ourselves). Soooo that's for tomorrow...