Still doing it myself

Now that LMB's room is all finished (well, just the desk to cut to size and fit), and her stuff is pretty much all up there in lovely little storage boxes we bought for her (humph - that room cost us a fortune in the end!), we've started turning her old room into Mstr A's new one.

Actually, he was in that room before - just a few years ago, we moved him out when LMD was born, and so it had originally been decorated for him, in a tasteful blue & silver, with stick big borders to keep it aghe appropriate, we thought we'd never have to do it again. But then when the ceiling leaked last year, we4 got the insurance company to splash for all new docorations, and made it VERY pink for LMB, who was in there then. Mstr A's favourite colour is pink, so I was having a hard time explaining to him why I wanted to paint over it all:) But someone at school must have said something, cos he suddenly decided pink was a girls colour and everyone would laugh if he kept it. I was hoping to paint over the wall paper that was already there, but when we took the fairy border off too much ripped, so £100 spent at B&Q yesterday for new paper.

Between them, Aggie & Mstr A chose a lovely light blue, fairly plain paper. I spent yesterday stripping (oooer) which hurt my rib no end - grrrrr! And today, Aggie put it all up - between watching the first series of Gavin & Stacy:) Now the room looks fab - I always knew it ought to be blue:)

Mstr A will be in there before Xmas. Yay!

DIY Day

We've spent the whole day getting LMB's new room finished - and hurrah, she is actually in sleeping there tonight! No toys or clothes there yet - I'll have to sort all that out during the week, but Aggie has built a double skinned wall, I have painted 5 coats on the three original walls & ceiling, & glossed the wooden beams, Aggie has papered the new wall, & big bordered the others, dismantled & rebuilt a bed and wardrobe in situ and re-wired the whole top floor of the house (Not necessarily in that order).

Now LMB has a little attic room at the top of the house - next job is to move Mstr A down into her old room (after tidying, decorating etc, and LMD up into his old room, so that the girls share the top floor, and Mstr A has the big room within shouting distance! And the little nursery next to our room will become the spare/foster kids room.

But first a well deserved rest - it's a long way to lug solid wooden furniture up & I'm knackered!

Getting sorted

Clever Aggie spent this morning putting together LMD's mid-sleeper bed for her. It was a bit of work as we got it off freecycle, with some fixings, no instructions and from a guy who had never seen it put together in the first place! As we had collected not only the bed but some miscellaneous bits of wood and half a wardrobe as well, Aggie had to work out what went where, why and how before even starting the hard`work of assembling it. Along the way he discovered that some bits had already been "bodged a bit":-) and that it was 1cm longer than the previous bed we had in there, which meant it didn't actually fit between the walls!

But he managed to sort everything out and she now has her own bed with a ladder and a desk so she can be the same as LMB. It also means I can now really get knuckled down to sorting out all their stuff. I've almost finished sorting LMB's room. What she has got in there is all that she is having in there! I've just got the last couple of toy drawers to fill up and Aggie has to put up a shelf and she's done. If she wants anything else she will have to decide what will be removed to make space for it.

LMD's room will be the same hopefully in another week or so. Once I've worked out what she can have in there, everything else will be taken away and hopefully the concept of tidying up each day will be drummed into them:-)

I wonder if there are any indoor car boot sales around here? :-)

Next job is for us (Well, Aggie) to finish the last bits of DIY in the girls rooms and to get on with finishing our bedroom walls (long time readers will remember that this was on his To Do list over a year ago!) so that we can sort out our bedroom and then we are`well on our way to getting things sorted:-)

Lets do it all again

Everything is starting over here.

I went back to college tonight. I'd forgotten how the tutor rambles on - it's amazing we learn anything really:-) Tonight was all the boring induction stuff, but this years course is mostly much more interesting subjects so I'm quite looking forward to it.

the insurance company called a couple of days ago in response to my letter of compliant. They sent a surveyor round today who was even more disgusted with the shoddy work done that I was! So that mollified me a little, and he agreed that they will have to come back and do the whole thing again. Some time. The insurance company did say they would get it fixed and then discuss compensation though, which will be nice.

Re-enactment season is over now, so it's back to the normal weekend's of kids activities and DIY etc. I'm hoping to get a nice dress made for me when i've bought some more linen, but I can't start the kids until after Xmas as they'll grow too much! But school's back so it's back to the mad rush every morning and keeping track of which child should be where, when. I can't wait for the kids to be old enough to take themselves off to all their activities!

Work has settled down a bit now too. Aggie is still off, but has been getting quite a bit oif stuff sorted out at last, so things are starting to move forward. we now have a nice new boiler, and a whole bunch of hand rails around the house so that he doesn't fall in and out of the front door, stairs and bath/shower. Even the garden is looking acceptable:-) Perhaps we can start inviting the kids friends round to play again soon.