elegentry

Kitchen is successfully de-greened. 3coats of cream paint on, new lockable window winder installed and all door and window furniture back on. In addition
-blind is cut down to fit inside window frame and reinstalled
-blue gingham frill curtain made and installed. Bit twee but I am finding it nice for now. Matches the door curtain.
( see: )

Do you like? I do, vastly prefer. The cream colour is a treat for the (my) eye. I look at it and feel relaxed, my eyes go "ahh". What a great thing.

Should have written this earlier. My focus is shifting away, to house cleaning, deep tidy, rearranging furniture. All that.

Went to festi, came home. Did lots of fun stuff during.

On the way there
-foot complained lots. Needed painkillers and lots of breaks
-visited several good friends, one that I had not seen in about a year and has a new 3wk old daughter. So good to see her. Great to spend time with R&J (even if J says rude things about blogs) and Quatrefoil in her lovely little flat.

While there
-met the new site, very pretty! Did I take pics? sadly no. It is a valley surrounded by tree covered hills, very green and lush... because it is very damp. Also warmer and more humid than I like for much of the time. My big coat did not get worn at all and much sweating was done.
-managed not to get eaten by leeches unlike most of my household
-loved seeing everyone and catching up
-sang, sewed, cooked, drank some
-loved my new black frock and bright underskirt! Really works. Yellow Durer - convinced the neckline is wrong, bother, how to fix? The revamped button frock was most useful as cool working frock.
-loved living in my little tent
-for a change was not terrified that the big feasting tent would fall down- no high winds. What a relief.
-did three stints on troll gate- rather fun. Friday was too busy to do anything but sign people in. Other two days had time for sewing and chat. Very pleasant that the two quieter days had friends of mine on duty with me, quite by accident.
-went to my first L meet in years- actually useful, productive and well run. Encouraging.
-participated in the making of two new Ls! Both also friends, one ex apprentice. Very pleased.
-Enjoyed the household children. Seemed like 16 of them but there was really only 4.
-the kitchen sink! We kept a tidier camp this year than ever before in my memory. Much nicer.

On the way home
-packed up damp tents etc.  No choice, Monday was VERY wet and the humidity was so high that everything was damp even when the sky was fine.
-raced off to see Miss A who lives locally and I have not seen in 4-5yrs? Found her, spent half an hour or so until she had to race off to work. Sad to lose connections, great to have them reformed.
-Foot was vastly better, only a few twinges and no painkillers taken
-stayed with A&P, what a pleasant evening!
-experienced a dust storm on the road- thick orange clouds, had to slow to a crawl, could not see the road let alone vehicles! Put both headlights and hazard lights on in case another driver was more brave about speed than I. Very glad it did not last long.

After
-vast amounts of laundry, dishes, tidying, nearly done now.
-tent walls have gone really mouldy. No suprise but I need to figure how to deal with them. Has anyone got tips? I am thinking spray bottle of bleach or somesuch. Rest of tent is fine. Maybe this is where I finally need to remake the walls?

Interestingly I have arrived home wanting to make the house nice, rather than wanting to frock. Probably because I have been frocking for months and doing almost no housework. I want a deep tidy, furniture moved, painting and decorating plans finished. Spent much of the trip home planning this in my head. I'll spend a bit of time on this before I need to frock for midwinter.

I just put these bricks here for storage. Twasn't as hard as it would have been if my neighbour hadn't helped. She wanted them out of her garden, I want a brick front path eventually. We are both now slightly happier and more tired.

Finally! the bathroom cupboards are installed. Not photo-worthy yet, not until stuff is hidden/tidied away into said cupboards. Whew, hard work but worth it. Looks good, still feels airy even though there is more furniture. Tired now. The generous erudito  came twice today to help lift and/or hold things. Second time he got fed dinner in appreciation. I could tell you about the screws that were too short, or the way the wing screws didn't work first time 'cause I had them around the wrong way, then they were too short anyway so I had to go buy bigger ones...but I don't think that's necessary.

Now to go use my lovely new bathroom. I have a mirror! I can see what I am doing when flossing my teeth! I have a shelf to put the floss on! Well, I think it's exciting. I'd better, having spent weeks getting to this point.

My big question for today: will I be brave enough to wield an angle-grinder for the first time? Various metal things for the bathroom need editing and I haven't the strength or patience to do it with a hacksaw. Is it stupid to also cut wooden things with an angle-grinder?

First I need to finish waking up. Then I will measure and mark the cut lines carefully. Then find clamps, goggles etc. Both hands on the anglegrinder... We will see.

It is late for me to be still waking up. I went to bed early-first time for weeks. Then got a call from giddyaunt , a lovely thing, and still within the bounds of "a reasonable hour". Then work rang with a big issue in one of my ports which kept me up till past midnight. Not my fault and I can't fix it but that doesn't stop me feeling sick-guilty. Really hard to sleep in that state. I am on tenterhooks waiting for the call that says all OK now.

Coat one went on the bathroom walls yesterday. The process was less painful than I feared. The new edger pad tool was fantastic-when the bit being painted was within arms reach. Not so accurate at the end of a pole. So I have made a bit of a mess of the cornices, pretty good for the rest except where I missed bits of wall. Still that is what a second coat is for- to cover the bits you missed last time. I can touch up the cornices after. Now the hard bit is that I am not sure I like the colour. It looks much more pink than I thought it would. eek? Actually it is a colour I really like, just wasn't imagining the bathroom quite so pink. I shall do the second coat anyway and then see what it looks like with the wooden blinds back and the floor tiles exposed. Nearly anything looks horrid next to the urk coloured drop sheets. Lots more of the wall will be covered up too with towels and cupboards etc when finished so perhaps the effect will be dampened, here's hoping.

Need to get second coffee down me first so I can do the coat in one go.

Later:
second coat on. Still suspending judgement about the colour.  Only used shy of a third of the 4L paint. Wonder what else could be painted almost pink?

Really want a shower but bathroom full of fumes. I'd better find something else grotty to do before the bathroom is habitable. Maybe I can dig out the rubbish from the front wall "planter" space so I can put the new geraniums in.

Even Later:
-wall dug out, refilled with potting mix,  geraniums planted in. Looks fab. Now hoping they grow.
-sad looking red geranium seedling potted up, fingers crossed
-new "apollo" tomato planted

Will the sky do some watering in please?

Yay for doingness. I finished my today list! Kitchen is reclaimed. Bathroom trim all pale cream now, lovely. I find it restful to the eye. New lockable window winders installed. One rather bodgily but functional. During this bodgy installation I had an amusing moment- needed to drill holes over my head- needed position was perfect for all the sawdust generated to fall straight into my cleavage. Not comfortable but pretty funny.

Still plenty more painting and suchlike to do but no more today. I sit here with tired arms trying to decide whether I like red wind spritzers.

second coat done on bathroom door and architraves. Yay!

conclusions drawn:
-there needs to be a third coat, boo. That changes my view of how much I can do this weekend. Esp given I have two social engagements today.
-I'm not a great painter, particularly of skirting boards


In other news- I have given up trying to find a home for my pot of rosemary*- so I have just planted it in a corner of  the herb garden. Looks cute there and I tend not to grow anything else in that corner. It will make shade for the dirt behind it and maybe help the new sage from A to grow. I read that sage and rosemary are companion plants.

*claimed from a year old layering of the monster bush in my front yard.

Now you see it


Now you (almost) don't


I'm rather pleased. Note the wall is white rather than grey- hard to take a good picture of a white wall.

See, I said I was going to come up with a better version of the bell pull assembly. It is much prettier now and the cord works better than the old wire (just as R said it would). Welcome serendipity, the random sized hole I drilled in the wall turned out to be the perfect size to jam an eyelet into to both help the string move smoothly and make the hole look like it is meant to be there.



Doesn't this look inviting? Do you like the tassel? I couldn't resist though I don't know how long it will last.