Furnished

Arne got a pucker football table for Christmas from his wonderful parents. It makes quite a feature in the room.

The least he could do really is to let us win occasionally....

.....But the fact that he almost always beats me 10-9 or 10-8 leads me to conclude that he's just toying with me.

Finished! (And that's not a word I use lightly)

After all the painting was done, the carpet men came two days before Christmas.

As well as the painting, I put up some fitted shelves (using recycled mahogany from the old window surrounds we ripped out) to replace a cheap and nasty bookshelf from Argos, and made a door (painted to match the bedroom door) to turn some shelves into a slimline wardrobe.

Turning clockwise.... If you refer to the plan a couple of posts ago you'll see just how close the reality is to the computer simulation.

The door looks rather cool if I say so myself...

Finally the bed was reconstructed and AJ spent his first night back in his room. I think Arne's design works fabulously, and I know he'd love to hear your thoughts, so feel free to comment!

Turning it into Reality

After the skirting boards were replaced and painted black, the fireplace needed attention.

We used spray paint to turn it from white to black.

Lots of work was done restoring the door. It was sanded down, all the cracks and woodworm holes were filled and a nice neat wooden bead was added around all the panels. It was then primed with grey acrylic primer.

We could then paint it with gloss according to Arne's design. The walls are being painted in the background.

Here's Arne doing a fine job with the yellow.

Arne's Vision

Poor old Arne was ill the day we were going out to choose a carpet. This was the weekend before last. So I went and came home with a few samples of carpets I thought he'd like. He chose one with orange and terracotta type colours.

I scanned the sample he chose and did a very quick bird's eye representation of his room on the computer, and Arne proceeded to pick his colours for the room. He was very clear from the start that he wanted a different colour on each wall. This was the final design he came up with.

Oops....

Since we are going to put down a carpet in Arne's room, it seemed like a good idea to take this unique opportunity to treat the floor timbers for woodworm.

I pulled up every fourth floorboard and sprayed the timbers with woodworm killer wile Arne was at school, partly to spare him the worst of the fumes, and partly because I didn't fancy another lecture on woodworm rights.

I found out just how easy it is to take a step back and find there's no floor under your foot. Lucky all the ceilings are in such a bad state they all need replacing anyway, really.

The mess will take a bit of clearing up though.... Better get on with it now before Janine comes home. Maybe she won't notice the ceiling or take the p*ss out of me for the next three years. Maybe pigs will fly....

Back to it

After getting sucked into the loft for nearly two weeks, I'm back in Arne's room. I've spent 2 days cleaning up and filling cracks and holes (of which there were many) to get to this stage....

....and today I got a coat of white emulsion on the whole room to prime the bare walls, so the Kerslake signature from October 1940 has been hidden again for someone to rediscover in the future. Arne has yet to choose what colour he wants the finished walls to be, so stay tuned!

Yesterday was a good day!

Nothing went wrong and we made lots of progress. Those kind of days don't come along every day you know! Richard is spreading his misery and germs elsewhere at the moment so a strange, eerie sense of joy and wellbeing swept though the house. Its as if this whole project has suddenly gone bipolar....

We started off with this box of multi-coloured spaghetti. Ratty turned up early before Arne had gone to school, and he just had time to give Ratty a hand and tell him what to do.

By the end of the day, it looked like this. All the new sockets and many of the lights are now live.

Meanwhile, I painted the ceiling in Arne's room, the leftover paint being enough to also paint half a wall.

After lunch, I set about some plastering. I fixed up this small hole in Arne's wall...

...but I was really chuffed with how this turned out. Lots of trial and error, but I got it looking smooth and flat with a nice sharp edge. I'll not be attempting any ceilings just yet though....

Kerslake

We found out a little more about who is likely to have written "Kerslake Oct 23 1940" on the wall. As I said, the Kerslakes are a big family around here, and there are still a couple of brothers around who are around 70+. It was probably their father, who was a painter and decorator. Pure history, man!

Archaeology

Here's a fascinating little aside. I spent much of my weekend stripping the wallpaper and paint off the walls in Arne's room. Under the paper written on a layer of paint, I found this. The Dua family owned the house from about 1981-1999 I think, and many of them still live locally.

When I stripped all the paint away, I found this on another wall. "Kerslake Oct 23 1940." The Kerslakes are a big family around these here parts. If I manage to find out anything about who might have written this, I'll let you know!

More AJ's room

Back to Arne's room. The ceiling in here was 9mm plasterboard (should be 12mm). The joins were full of some sort of filler which hadn't been smoothed down (should have been taped prior to skimming with plaster). It hadn't been skimmed, but had been painted with textured paint which had almost completely failed to disguise the crimes just outlined.

What's this "Heath Robinson" style contraption?

A plaster board hoist! That's what!

Going up......

We're screwing new 12mm boards up over the old ceiling. We drew lines first where all the joists run, so we'd know where to put the screws. Rich looks like he's amazed they haven't fallen down. Or maybe he's just had an idea?

The whole ceiling is up. The holes are where the downlighters will go. Rich was meant to be skimming it today but he's not very well. Unusually, his ailment is not a hangover. Get well soon.

AJ's room

First, we move the furniture out of the way.

Then we strip all the wallpaper, pull out the window surrounds, knock off the loose plaster, foam in the window, making loads of mess and dust creating large amounts of black bogeys.

The insulation board goes up.

Wall is plastered and the new radiator is hung. There, that wasn't so bad, was it?