two doors

Now there are two doors.
Poor Tom the Carpenter, having toiled all day in the sun had to come and toil some more.
Almost finished!

a door

I was hoping to the doors would all be up this weekend, even though young Tom the Carpenter (cute with ute) worked feverishly on Saturday, by 3.30pm it seemed only fair to let him go home )it was his day off). He'll be back to finish tomorrow afternoon. (Am thinking of locking him under the stairs and making him make a wardrobe and the kitchen for me, and then pimping him out to other people who need a carpenter..... just kiddin')
And the electricians are coming at 7.30pm so we'll have lighting too!
I was going to wait and unveil it all at the same time but thought I'd give you a teaser.
It took the whole day for me to paint all the skirting boards and architraves and corners in the BIG ROOM. The ceiling is just under 14ft (I think, it has a false ceiling but is still really high) so every 75cm or so I'd have to climb down and move the ladder and then climb back up. So by 4pm, piked off and went to Richmond, visited Metro Bolts (have I told you I love hardware and stationary?), Swan St Auctions and Ikea, all in my painting gear (which was fun, very 'I'm in the middle of renovating and am too busy to change- or shower').

made my afternoon

Fell off my chair with laughter when I found this on the Museum of Art and Design New York website. It's by Freddie Robins.

destructo-girl strikes again

So the last thing I did before I left this evening was chiselling off the tiles in the kitchen.
Half came off like a dream, this was the batch glued to the solid plaster and the other half, well lets say 'messy'.
It was quite fun though. Except for the hammered knuckle, the cut finger and the flying chips of razor sharp ceramic. Like I said, fun. Nothing like a bit of mayhem to finish the day.

I had to go to Manfax at lunchtime and strolling up the road I realised how many people I know along rue de Gertrude. There was Karen at Alice, Emma at Metal Couture, Dan at Artisanand I met a neighbour, Penny at Radio, where I stopped for lunch on the way back. It took me a while to get to Manfax and back.

I've started work on the BIG room.
It will be a BIG painting job. The good thing being I won't be painting over red or green.
(By the way the whole pea-green incident is over- ok? Drop it or I'll come around and paint your bedroom pea-green when you are out.)

just hanging

A line up (ha ha) of some of the hangers I've been knitting.

day 12

I've been having strange dreams (like I care about Heather Mills' divorce from Sir Paul, like I enjoy painting in my sleep....) and am so freakin' tired I just don't have enough energy for anything. Trying to make even the most basic decisions is very hard. I think my brain hurts and I know my nose is discharging paint (sorry, gross I know, but I seriously can't smell a thing and it's all pus-like, so 'discharging paint' sounds so much nicer).
I have taken some time off today, visited Craft Vic to see Caz Gurney's exhibition and chin-wag with Beck for a while. Back to the shop to meet the ill-prepared plumber who I will have to re-meet tomorrow so he can install a new toilet.

Electrician is booked for next Tuesday, so I went and picked up my very special (and most expensive) Deco light shade from the Junk Company. It looks like a pink glass jelly mold. The cotton bound flex and bronze fittings are being put together as I write and should be ready to be picked up in a couple of days, ready for the sparky to do his expensive work.



The bedroom is, as of yesterday, cream, no hint of pea-green. It would have been a really quick job had I not had to paint over the top such a strong colour. Oh well. Won't be living that one down in a hurry.

I also picked up the stripped doors and they are propped up against the wall in the shop. After I carried them in and lined them up I discovered they are all higgled-piggledy in height and will have to trimmed. Quite funny really, the house they originally came from must have been all out of whack!

And it hasn't been all crashing out and blobbing when I get home. I'm rather psycho (as you may have guessed) at the moment and most of my evenings have been spent knitting tams or coat hanger covers or embroidering the last of the linen skirts that I started a month+ ago. Tonight, though, might have to be valium and bed.

(When the plumber was leaving this afternoon, he looked around the almost finished shop and said 'you got a lot of work to do here luv'. I could have cried. I could have laughed.)

visitors

Sadly I will not be able to hide the pea-green fiasco. Too many people visited today for me to live that mistake down. Ben is threatening to keep that one up his sleeve as ammunition. I so rarely make such a massive colour blunder as the 'pea-green room'. Oh well.
In between visitations I managed to get the last of the battens onto the joins in the walls and give them a couple of licks of paint (and I started painting out the green in the bedroom).



Bella 1 and Bella 2 ran around and checked everything out and stood up and looked out the upstairs window and yelped excitedly at the view. And their respective mums and dads did the same but a little more sedately.

And then I washed the brushes and came home. Tired and foot-sore as usual.