Feeling a bit guilty

My parents are over. They arrived on Tuesday evening to find the flat in a bit of a state - I'd done the washing up on Monday night when I got in from work at about half-midnight (yeah, it's going from bad to worse) and a very quick tidy up but I hadn't cleaned properly and everything was still piled in the front room. Which makes me feel particularly bad that when I've dragged my sorry self home from work the last two nights it's been to find dinner on the table and increasing amounts of paint off my bedroom woodwork. My dad's just about finished the window and boy but it's been a huge job. He's got it looking so good I'll feel almost guilty (that word again) about painting it again. Wonder what it'd look like with a wooden window frame against painted wood trim everywhere else. Quite good perhaps...
Anyway, to bed. Work again tomorrow, engraving in the evening, then the WEEKEND!!!!

Paint chipping

Late nights at work again all last week so I didn't get back to my bedroom until Friday night. As I waited for the kettle to boil for my hot water bottle (yeah, very hot, but I don't have proper heating and I love my repurposed Sigg - stays warm 'til morning!), I went in to take a look at what I'd done last weekend and started idly picking at a loose bit of paint on the hall side of the door. Bad move - an hour later, I was still there, surrounded by paint chips but at least I'd done a whole side. Nothing more addictive than picking, especially when whatever it is comes off in satisfyingly large pieces.

I know that this is NOT an effective way to strip paint but I'd started, so I ended up spending the weekend finishing that side of the door. Of course, I enlisted the support of my trusty scraper and my trusty penknife but it was still a slow job. In the process, I discovered that the clumpy layers of white paint hide semi-clumpy green paint and that two of the windows have been broken and replaced at some point so the molding is just a rough approximation of quarter-diameter dowling. I was rather relieved to discover that actually, as I'd got down to the wood in a couple of places and was wondering if I'd be morally obliged to strip all the doors and panels in the apartment back to basics to show off the wood.

This is how things stand tonight:
Next steps: find a way to take the paint off the handles and bring on the chemicals for the windows and the other door - enough of this penknife nonsense!

Dust

Having de-poussièred my house last Sunday night and spent a whole week of evenings breathing fresh air, I got stuck in with the sandpaper again today.


This morning, I shunted all of my furniture into my sitting room in preparation for a blitz. My parents are coming over in a few weeks - partly for a holiday, partly to wield paint-brushes - and even though I know they'd be happy to do it, I don't want to land them with all the preparation. So I got out my steps and my sandpaper, put on my work clothes, plugged the gaps under the bedroom doors in a (failed) attempt to keep the dust from getting out, and set to.

The lazy bugger was who sloshed white emulsion all over this flat at some point in the last twenty years deserves to be shot. I spent four hours just on the glass door and I didn't even finish there were so many slobbery drips and runs and lumps (how do you even make lumps when you're painting?). There's paint on the glass and paint on the door handles and the detail of the molding is obscured by... paint. Yeech. Oh, and he had a go at the cornice too.

It's really strange powdery, chalky paint which is pretty difficult to clean up so I'll see if I do anything this week during the evening or if I just have another blitz next weekend when I have enough time to make real headway and justify the cleaning up time. In the meantime, I'm all cosy in my sitting room. Slightly crowded, it must be said, but it'll be nice to wake up in here for a change.