DIY Blues

Today was a day for getting a lot done. Somehow, there is a higher order of DIY where there are days which seem to make things worse, and days where things get finished. Today was a day when some things, at least, got finished. Applied the third coat of supposedly one-coat emulsion to the ex-blue bedroom, and did the ceiling. It's all operating-theatre white now (who knows, maybe such places aren't really white), and waiting for dark furniture to attenuate the glare. The worst job was dealing with the narrow channel between the skirting tiles (equivalent of skirting board) and the walls. The only way to get the gunge in the interstices white was to drop loaded paintbrushes-full into the crack next to the wall, with consequent spillage onto the tiles themselves.

Today was payback day, for this short-cut, so out with a craft knife, and lying on my side (boy, are tiled floors hard and unforgiving) an endless scraping job, all round the room. Then another scraping job, when I discovered that the grey grouting between the tiles was regarded as a plus, and needed clearing, with scalpel precision, of the excess of white emulsion.

Still, that's another room done. Now for the upstairs, including dealing with an old leak, next to the Velux window. Spent the last hour of work tonight trying to unblock the Velux mechanism, and then using a cold chisel and mason's hammer to get rid of the water-compromised plaster where the leak was. Stuck a bit of kitchen towel overnight, to see whether the present incessant rain is actually getting in to the house, or whether the humidity is old, but trapped by treacherously applied textured paint, liberally applied by the vendor.