A long-awaited house update

This has been my view for much of today. This is the bannister rail at the top of the stairs, which was previously painted in royal blue gloss, which doesn't go well with the new 'soft cream' colour scheme. 

Here's a tip: if anyone asks you to strip gloss paint from a bannister, just say no. Stick your fingers in your ears, sing loudly, and then go and put the kettle on and make them a nice cake, and say no again. 

I confess that Peter has taken most of this off, with a heat gun and a scraper. It's taken months - it's hard work and quite dull, so is done between other jobs. But this week I'd taken the stair carpet up (to paint over - not strip - the royal blue gloss on the skirting board), and I decided to get the last bits off with paint stripper before putting the carpet back down, in that way that one job leads to another which leads to another... 

Paint stripper is a wonderful invention. Normally I try to avoid particularly noxious chemicals, but I think we've used our share of elbow grease on this job, and the scraper was struggling with the curves in the wood. Twenty minutes of paint stripper, a lot more elbow grease, one ruined toothbrush, several sheets of sandpaper, and a stint with an electric sander, and I think we're finally getting there. We'll finish it off properly another day - once the paint stripper was out of the way, it was time to replace the carpet. 

I have no experience of fitting carpets, and while that doesn't usually stop me, I won't be ruining the new carpet we're putting in the bedroom by fitting it myself. However, I only took the stairs carpet off the other day, and folded it all concertina-like in the kitchen, so I figured it would be pretty easy to just plonk it back on in the same position it was in before. 

The strips of underlay were separate, and in an ideal world I might have replaced them, as they were quite thin and worn, but this carpet is old, and I don't have any underlay in the house, so I turned each piece round so the worn part is at the back of the step, and it's made a remarkable difference to how the carpet feels. I suppose it's a bit like turning your mattress (although you wouldn't usually wait til it was completely crushed flat to do that). 

It was surprisingly easy to refit the carpet, and it makes me wonder whether fitting a new carpet is really as difficult as people make out, especially on the stairs where you're only trying to get a small bit flat at a time - although I suppose I was cheating in a way as my carpet was already stairs-shaped.

Half way up the stairs I found this. 

I've been ignoring this for months, if not years, but while I was sat on the stairs it seemed sensible to sort it out. But how? Various carpet-repairing websites suggested cutting a patch out of a spare bit of carpet (which we did have), enlarging the hole, and using carpet tape to stick the new bit in. I was reluctant - partly because we didn't have any carpet tape, which would have meant delaying the job, but also because this is on the edge of a step, so is likely to get caught by shoes on the way past (which is probably how it happened in the first place). 

Instead I settled for a kind of botched version of darning, using invisible thread. 

Not perfect, and I'll always be able to see it, but I doubt a casual visitor will notice when walking up the stairs. That carpet is nearly 25 years old, so anyone buying the house will likely want to replace it anyway, but at least this way the eye isn't drawn to an obvious hole. 

Somehow, those two jobs plus a trip to the DIY shop have taken most of the day. Isn't it always the way? 

This evening I suspect I'll mostly be lying on our newest item of furniture: 

Please excuse that dying plant, it's on its way to the compost bin, I just can't seem to keep it alive. But look at that chaise longue! We bought it second hand from Gumtree this week for £50 and we love it. We sleep on a mezzanine floor, so the ground floor of the bedroom can look a bit bare (when it's not full of decorating equipment, that is), and this, with a nice rug, will be the perfect addition. 

Of course, we need to remove all the decorating equipment, and get someone to replace the carpet first, so for now this is under the kitchen window. I love it, and might have to expand our new house criteria to include 'room for permanent chaise longue in kitchen'. Just the right place for lying for half an hour with a book, a cup of tea and a home made biscuit, wouldn't you say? 

As for the rest of the house... well. Many things are nearly-but-not-quite finished. Some things aren't even started. We're doing what we can, and the rest of the time I'm just lying on the chasie longue and closing my eyes so I can't see the mess.