March: a DIY update

Let's start with some home made scones, shall we? Because DIY is always more fun when you have a snack, especially a home made one. 

The last week or two of DIY for me has focused on the spare room. This is the smallest bedroom, next to the bathroom, which we've always used as a workshop and general dumping ground. Over the last few months (years) we've slowly been patching up the plaster on the walls, installing window frames and skirting boards (you'd think a room would have had these already, but clearly not) and fixing the floor. 

I spent a couple of nights last week up the ladder painting the ancient polystyrene ceiling tiles. We daren't take them down for fear of what we might find underneath, but they were grubby and speckled with unidentifiable black grime so I slapped on a coat of white paint and we're hoping they're unnoticeable. 

​The next thing to tackle was the floor. 

We've never done anything with this, but before we moved here various bits of it were painted different colours so was a bit of a hotchpotch. We had a large rug we planned to use in here, so we didn't do any fancy sanding or anything, just mended a couple of boards where they'd suffered mishaps over the years, and gave the whole thing a couple of coats of dark brown fence paint, which was extremely satisfying. 

Makes quite a difference, doesn't it? If you look closely you can still see lumps of glue and goodness knows what under the paint, but, well, if you come into this house and start looking under the rugs for blemishes then you might find yourself swiftly escorted out of the door...

After all that painting, we hopped to the city farm for a snack, and it was warm enough to sit outside there for the first time this year. 

We've been keeping an eye out on Freegle for a bed for the spare room, but last weekend a friend mentioned that her parents were taking one to the charity shop and would we like it instead? Yes please - we don't need it in the long term so we'll pass it on to the charity shop when we're done. Today I laid out the rug, put the bed together, and the whole thing is starting to look like a room in a normal house. 

Gosh. We've still got a few bits and pieces of furniture to go in here (chair, desk, standard lamp) that are dotted about the house, and I need to figure out what I've done with the single duvet, but this really does feel like progress. Right now it's the tidiest room in the house, and I can see it becoming a temporary reading room and sanctuary from the chaos in the coming weeks. 

​Getting there...