The weekend loomed

The weekend loomed and my only complete day to get some work done on the house.

I was aware that I needed to crack on with some painting and as it was to be oil based I knew that it would be unlikely that I could get two coats on in a day. I also knew that any dirty dusty work would be out of the question while the paint was drying so I had to get the work done early.

Basically getting home from work on Friday and it was to be another get some work done and then bed nights. Rather knackered from a full week of work it was home, make some grub, sit on the couch, have food, then wake up an hour later, darn.

Still I had time to get the work done so it was upstairs and into my overalls and having learned from my previous night of scraping paint off the floor I worked my way around the room taping paper along the skirting board. Newspaper is good for this but scrap A3 paper is even better, this paper had been sitting in the corner for over a year so it wasn’t in much demand and served a much better purpose as a dust sheet, repurposing too, very green. The stiffness of the paper worked well, being able to slot it under the skirting was great, it was a shame I ran out of it half way around the room as the newspaper I had to use wasn’t as stiff and durable.

Covering up this time

This took a half hour to do but proved far better than the previous hours and hours of scraping I had to endure to get emulsion off, as this was oil based it would have probably proved a lot more to endure.

Anyway everything masked off and I set about the painting, Dulux Satinwood Brilliant White, I didn’t fancy gloss, too in-your-face and a bit disco, I’d heard it was prone to go yellow too. Anyway I’d decided to leave the coving the white emulsion that it was already painted with. I’d thought about doing it with the Satinwood too, venturing into the thoughts that I was only being lazy, however the end justified the plan, I think the off-white finish on the coving very erm plaster-like and it matched my light fitting very nicely.

Anyway working around the room, painting the skirting, painting the dado rail and finally the door frame only took a few hours and by 10:30 I was cleaning up and admiring my work.

Next day the paint was a little tacky but was ready to go, however by luck or planning I had my lovely daughter that day and by the evening it was dry and ready for another coat. So an entire day with my daughter at my parents’ home and off back to my house to make a start on the second coat finishing the job off at 12:30 am ready for a day of work the next day.

Sunday morning and the paint was tacky, there were bits that might need some touching up but really it was ready to go.

[doptg id=”41″]

So finishing the room finally loomed, there were a couple of jobs to do:

Covers on to smarten up the plug sockets and lightswitches, I’d been warned away from the Screwfix jobbies but they worked well and worked out at a quarter of the price of some of the alternatives.

New light fitting to allow LED bulbs, lampshade swapped from smaller bedroom (worked well there but would work better in the bigger room) and then new lampshade into the smaller room.

Double curtain rail hangers fitted, curtain rails fitted too.

Windows and surrounds cleaned and floors around windows swept and tidied ready for radiators.

Radiators plumbed in, extra inhibitor added to tank, radiators filled and tested.

Radiators screwed to the floor using 6mm coach bolty screws, the clearance wasn’t enough for a screwdriver hence the bolts – they do look smarter too – the ratchet wrench was rather satisfying to use too, you felt you were getting some real purchase on the floor as the bolts clicked home.

Fixing a radiator to the floor

There was some work to do at the end of the day, but the list above along with some housework bits and bobs took me till 10pm. The above doesn’t sound much but each job comes with its own extra list of jobs to do, just fitting curtain rails doesn’t really describe the measuring, drilling and tidying up of drill dust one has to do, nor the work re-filling around plug sockets then repainting them before fitting the covers. Every job is simple till it becomes difficult, however I must say that due to my planning and attention to detail a lot of these jobs just slotted together The radiators for example just worked first time, they just needed a bit of coaxing into position, a bit of mucking with the wrong spanner, then a little less with the right spanner, application of a bit of sealing goo, a few tweaks up, slacken off the valves on the manifold, bleed the rad’s to fill them up and that was it, a synch.

OK screw them to the floor, add the inhibitor teetering on a set of steps, clean up the mess from the radiators leaking on the floor, struggle with the radiators from one room to the other. Cross your fingers that the screws wouldn’t go through something important.

OK it did drag on.

Anyway all I have to do now is a teeny bit of touching up on the skirting, remove the newspaper, hopefully not have to scrape up any paint, scrub the floor and then hang the curtains and…

DONE