India

I am stripping my daughter's room of its old, manky wallpaper. I am doing it very slowly: a little bit each day. Goodness knows how the decorator stripped our sitting room in one day the other week. I would lose the will to live.

Anyway it's interesting but when you are stripping wallpaper it invariably comes off in long tapered wrips, leaving India behind it.

More double meanings

Had the sitting room plastered yesterday......now there's a whole new set of verbal misunderstandings.........I promise by the end of the day of being plastered I was still standing upright and quite sober.

Decorating double entendres

Oh how the English language can get you into trouble. We have finally succumbed to a decorator coming in to do his best on the sitting room. It's not been touched since we moved in seven years ago. We have lived with orangey browney walls below the dado, a dirty cream above and a green ceiling. We don't even notice now that the chimney breast has been half denuded of its anaglypta since we put a wood burning stove in six long years ago.

Anyway it couldn't go on as it is now directly juxtaposed with a brand newly decorated, spick and span dining room. I procrastinate as it is about decorating my daughter's bedroom so the sitting room wasn't going to get transformed by my clumsy hand any time during this century.

Anyway back to the fun of the English language. My friend rang up at lunch time and asked what was happening in my life to which I replied "Well there's a man stripping in the front room." Wails of laughter followed and a confirmation that it was wall paper being stripped and nothing else. My friend's joy seemed slightly tinged with disappointment.

Later I popped into the sitting room to ask if coffee was required. The decorator had resorted to a steamer to strip the awkward bits. "Gosh it's hot and steamy in here," I ventured with windows condensing and a wall of heat hitting me. I rest my case.

To roll? To Brush? That is the question

Do you roll or do you brush? That is the question. I brush. I just can't quite get the hang of rolling. I have been known to roll but I prefer to brush. And oh the criticism I've endured. The looks of disbelief. And all this in my own home.

I talk of course of how you prefer to apply your paint onto your wall. The other week I transformed a wall from dull browny pink plaster into a vibrant shocking pink plaster. It took a few coats and I used a brush. Some builders were still hanging on doing electrics and joinery on the extension and oh the looks of incredulity that I had used a brush. In fact if I had heard another affirmation on the joys of rolling against the horrors of brushing I would have taken great pleasure in brushing (or rolling if they had preferred) a builder a beautiful shade of pink. Sadly they stopped their jibes before I had time to carry out my promise.

Now the builders are gone I am free and plodding on happily painting, painting, painting, brushing, brushing, brushing.