Low to High

From Last Wednesday’s DIY blues, to this week’s finish line in sight mood of optimism there have been tears, tantrums, near functional alcoholism, injuries, allergies (MDF dust, what a fucker), highs and low’s, drug abuse (mainly Paracetamol, but antihistamines as well), and the use of the full pantheon of colourful old English invective; that’s swearing; at things, people, happenstance... good and bad and just because I’ve slipped into a repetitive fuckfuckfuckfuck loop and need a slap to reset my brain. From the ashes of that midweek misery, we have risen like a flaming Phoenix to as yet uncharted heights of success... ahem. We’ve laid a tile effect laminate floor and finished painting the wood work indoors.

It’s the biggy, the corner turned, the light at the end of the tunnel is indeed the light at the end of the tunnel... not some delusion create by the DT’s or burgeoning insanity. We have just a tiny shave off the tops of the kitchen cupboard plinths, odds and sods and skirting’s to re-fit and “jobs a goodun”, we can move on. Now as it happens, we are at a bit of an impasse in the dinning room; to whit no materials and the place I need to get the MDF skirting from closes at five so I can’t pick it up until Friday (I want 4metre lengths because it requires no joins along the long walls). This means I can start a new job without getting antsy about leaving one unfinished... after all: Maximum Efficiency Minimum Effort.

The plumbing in of the new radiator and sink re-jig constitutes an entire separate work stream and is self contained (waxing lyrical and boardroom bollocks in one post, well I’m on fire today) so we are taking a break from the dining room and are moving on with another job this week: the hall and stairs... it’s a paint job with two hairline cracks to fill. Quite frankly I’m looking forward to it; there may be a few gremlins on the way but nothing like the aggravation that we’ve had elsewhere.

We finished Sunday with an appliance re-settlement and adjustment program followed by a focus group to discuss future comestible storage needs (moved the fridge/freezer and washing machine back into their respective positions threw away some out of date crap and decided to eat the contents of the freezer before doing another big shop). We then did another mega dust and mop, took more painkillers and went to bed, where upon we were sung to sleep by a mosquito (when I say sung to sleep, I mean kept torturously awake d until I got up and hunted the little fucker down with a war pillow and smeared him against the wardrobes).

So today the house is feeling like home again, which is important if you’re selling. There’s the smell of freshly laid floor, subtle paint undertones and space in the hall where the fridge has been squatting for eight weeks... nine weeks... I can’t be arsed to check back and find out, it may be even longer. We have space and room in the kitchen to move the pieces of the puzzle around again, and in doing so we have de-cluttered some cupboards, re-homed some vases and crocks and stopped breathing in the dust of the previous months. These are the tiny faltering but positive steps to March 21^st 2021. If I could get a weeks leave and a few good nights sleep I could crack the whole thing, but today right now... I’m cheerful.