Is There A Light At the End of This Tunnel? ….. Sept 2014

24 August - 07 September 2014:  London

At Last the Living Room

With the kitchen, bathroom, hallway and bedroom  now only requiring finishing touches it was time to tackle the living room.  As it had been our “workshop” over the last 2 months we had acquired quite a pile of tools, paints, timbers and various other essential equipment that now needed to be relocated.  It was the bedrooms turn to be the new workshop.

The living room was to be “relatively easy” so we did a few other little jobs.  A morning was spent extending our car hire, another choosing and purchasing a new fridge/freezer and carpet for the lounge and bedroom.  We sorted through all our “leftovers” from the kitchen installation – panels we didn’t need, packets of this and that we hadn’t used, they equated to nearly £170 pounds in refunds so certainly worth the effort to return!

Then we turned our focus on the living room.  We spent a day pulling up the old carpet and preparing the floor then started attacking the walls.  We had patches where the paint was  peeling off, but we thought it was just contained to two of the walls.   When we started removing it, it became apparent that we would need to peel back all four walls.  Some came off in big chunks, others bite sized pieces but much of it came off in tiny flakes, it was a long, laborious, very messy and unfulfilling job but it had to be done. 

All the surrounding woodwork was sanded creating lots more mess, and then we spent a day trying to fill the hairline cracks on the plaster walls.  We had thought the lounge would be relatively quick and easy but things were not going to plan.

Plans, What Plans?

With all the surfaces finally plastered, clean and ready to paint we fitted in a day trip down to Lymington on the South Coast.  Mark had gone up the mast before we left Balvenie and removed our wind instruments which had stopped working last December.   We had arranged for them to be serviced same day so we did the 5 hour round trip in a day and spent some time exploring Lymington while we waited.  The good news is that there was a fault in the unit, it has now been fixed and should work again once reattached to the masthead. 

Day trip over, the painting began, and that was when our planned timescale of the living room completion took another turn for the worse.  While I did the first coat in the corners and on the edges Mark started rolling the walls.  The first coat barely left a white washed effect, the second coat was little improvement.  Two coats of Dulux Pure Brilliant White had not covered the grey plaster or the lines of white filler and we had used 5 litres.  This was not the result we were hoping for and we had to have it finished in time for the carpet to be laid.  We changed paint brand and bought a 5 litre pail of Crown, another 2 coats was applied to the walls, at last they were looking white but it was still patchy and another day had gone by.

Then we bought a 5 litre pail of Dulux One Coat, guaranteed to provide a perfect finish with just one coat.    On went the 5th coat of paint, then some spots had a 6th.  Finally we were happy with the finish.  The woodwork, window frame and door were completed, light shades fitted and a major cleanup and sort out followed.  The carpet layers arrived the following afternoon, the photo shows just the underlay – we haven’t put down white carpet!!

Weeks 8 & 9 Spent on the Living Room – Harder Than It Should Have Been