Categories: uncategorized
Date: 12 March 2005 20:17:54
Yep, you guessed it, wallpaper. A few months ago, Spike, myself and our livestock moved out of a flat which belongs to Spike's mum. She now needs to either sell the flat or let it out to someone else. The snag is, said flat was a bodged conversion job which hasn't been decorated for about 20 years. It soon became clear that sister-in-law no 3's suggestion 'just bung a coat of Magnolia on it' wasn't going to do the trick. S-in-L no 2's husband, a civil engineer and compulsive renovator, has been appointed site manager and has gutted the place - it has what an estate agent would call a 'spacious open-plan kitchen' (ie there aren't actually any walls at the moment), and a 'white bathroom suite' (which is propped up against the bedroom wall). Every weekend since the beginning of November, various permutations of the 4 siblings, their partners and anyone else they can drag along have been hard at work on the sort of stuff this particular daughter-in-law has previously only seen on programmes like 'Property Ladder'.
Weirdly, I have been quite enjoying peeling layers of wallpaper, while S-in-L 2 hates it - but I hated weeding and digging the garden, which I know any number of folk see as an enjoyable hobby. It's satisfying when a big chunk of paper comes off (the bits with polystyrene backing are great for this). I've also been transported back to my childhood by tantalising glimpses of brightly-coloured paisley patterned wallpaper, which carbon-dating would surely reveal to be 1970s in origin.