Well, despite our good intentions a series of minor obstacles and one major one prevented getting into the bedroom by Christmas. Ah well, the best laid plans and all that.
Ideally, we would have liked to finish all the painting by the time the carpet went in but when your carpet fitter is doing it as a favour and for a very reasonable price you get it done when he can. We're very pleased with the result though.
Thankfully, Charlie was on hand to help us mask it all off before we painted. And what a good and thorough job he did. Cheers mate!
The light fitting had to move from the wall to the ceiling which meant running a new cable from the junction box in the loft to a new pendant in the ceiling.
Not too tough a job but I'm no electrician so I was very careful to research exactly what I was doing. I also made Sonia turn the fuse on with a broom handle but as you can see, it worked.
With the light moved I could paper the feature wall. We managed to find the exact wallpaper I wanted in Wilkinsons at less than half price! I should probably have used lining paper under the wallpaper but it still looks pretty good anyway.
You may wonder why the window surround has not been painted. Well, while Charlie was sanding the wood down above the window, he noticed that the wall was wet. We brushed it off: "It's just cold/condensation." we said; "It will be fine." we said and went to the pub.
It wasn't. A few days later, the paint was still not dry, the wallpaper had bubbled up, the damp meter was reading "red" all over and we were fearing the worst. On top of that, the loft was dripping with condensation and I was fearing for all the books that we have stored up there. I covered them up with a tarp but knew it could only be a temporary solution.
To make matters worse, that night we discovered damp in the spare bedroom; the one we were sleeping in. The radiator had not been working since we moved in. We had figured that we sort it when we'd moved into the main bedroom and we had the space to move around but with the encroachment of fungus on the skirting we knew it had to be fixed asap. Thankfully, a couple of hours, a google search or two and a few sharp taps with a hammer (and a lot of swearing) freed up the valve. The radiator sprang into life instantly and within seconds we had heat. And there was much rejoicing.
However the whole drippy, dank, depressing episode had brought us to our lowest ebb so far.
The next day, an inspection outside turned up a likely culprit. The gutters surrounding the front of the house were overflowing with unwanted flora and we'd had some heavy rain. This meant an awful lot of water had been running down the walls. We enlisted Simon to come and have a look. Luckily, he'd been doing some window cleaning so he and Derek were able to pop round and clear the gutters out. They also found a missing tile or two so pulled the waterproof membrane over to cover the hole. Thankfully, this pretty much solved the problem and we were able to finish the painting.
This delay cost us a couple of days and our dream of sleeping in the bedroom before Christmas as, despite the holes being plugged, the wall was still sodden and we couldn't put curtains up. However, Simon and Derek's intervention meant that we were able to face the Christmas holiday without worrying about the damp too much. Thanks guys!
We returned from our Christmas and New Year break to find the damp all but gone. On the weekend following our return Gary, Anna and Jaimi came up to fix the missing roof tiles and help us put up the curtains properly. We finally managed to spend a night in our new bedroom on the 6th January. Not too bad considering the delays. The bedroom is now finished except for new furniture and we can move on to the next area of the house. Two rooms down!
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