Our First Flat

Decorating the main bedroom

After putting it off for much longer than we needed to - mainly due to Henry not wanting to move all the furniture out of the way - we finally got around to redecorating our bedroom today. Henry took 2 days off work, and the bank holiday meant we had a good 3 or 4 days to get it all done in. Easy you say! Well no, not really, and it was once again due to the bloody woman who lived here before us...

Like in the spare bedroom, the plastering in this room has obviously been redone rather recently. However, rather than doing a layer of watered-down paint on top of the plaster like you're supposed to, the previous occupent obviously realised she couldn't be arsed with that and decided to paper over the whole lot instead. All well and good for her, but she has clearly got no skills in papering either, as they all overlapped each other by a good centimeter or so.

So we took the old paper off, which was a good days work in itself, and then started to chip away at the numerous layers of paint around the different walls. Once we'd done the best we could at that (it's by no means perfect, but it'll do) we did an undercoat, then the two layers of beigey-white paint, then Sara did the wood work to boot. Henry decided the carpet had to go, so we cut that in to tiny pieces as well (since we still had all the furniture in the middle) and eventually got rid of that too.

Let there be (fancy) light!

Another recent purchase from the magical land of Ikea was a new bookcase for the hallway (extra slim to fit in the small space available) and a new light, also for the upstairs hallway. Both have resulted in the hallway looking much brighter in general, and they were only slightly painful to put up! The bookcase is actually bolted to the wall to stop it falling over when we charge down the stairs, so hopefully it should stand steady for a good while yet.

Wired for sound - in the garden!

The final touches in the garden today, with Henry finally getting round to wiring up the rock speakers, and Sara buying him a new MP3 Stereo, especially for the garage, to hook them up to. Don't worry though, it only cost £30! As well as those, we bought some nice candle-holding flower type things from Ikea, though we've not had a chance to try them out yet...