Day 243 - D.I.Y.

K___ has alluded to the fact that there has been a bit of swearing in our house this week.

She's wrong. It has been a huge amount of swearing. The dial has gone up to 11 more than once. No, hang on... Occasionally, the dial has come down from 11.

I bloody hate DIY; I understand the concepts perfectly well, but when I try and actually do the jobs...

Grrrrrrrrr!

The first job it was putting back the curtain rail in the living room after it pulled off the three bits of blu-tack that the previous bloke had put it up with and smashed down on top of the stereo, cracking the lid of the record player and pulling down loads of plaster. That involved attempting to drill into the lintle. Naturally I used a masonry drill. It went through the plaster fine, no problems. And then it hit what was obviously a beam of concrete underneath, whereupon it whirred away merrily and ineffectually despite my best efforts. A couple of times, I thought I'd managed to get the damned thing to drill a hole deep enough, only to bend the highly expensive wall fittings when I attempted to bang them in (and yes, you were supposed to use a hammer).

What else have we had..? About a thousand trips to the local tip and massive re-organisation of existing contents of cupboards. We still have loads of crap, but nevertheless a lot less than before. I must give kudos to the tip. They're really strict about separating out the recyclable stuff from what you take down there now, which is good.

Putting together new furniture. That's always fun, especially when you have to try and work out what the horrendously poor diagram is trying to tell you to do. Smashing my unprotected toes into newly located furniture gave rise to a few remarkably inventive bits of swearing, I can tell you.

Re-tiling the bathroom. Actually, my mother has generously agreed to help us do that. I de-tiled. Nice job. I put all the tiles into a plastic bag. When it came to taking them downstairs to put in the car for yet another trip to the 'Tip of Doom', I managed to tip them down the stairs. Of course I had an arm underneath; I'm stupid, but not that stupid!

Anyway, the point of all this stuff is that we needed to get it done now, because doing it after the baby arrives would be a nightmare. It's dirty and it's dusty, but it really needs doing. Most of these jobs are in order to make the place look presentable, not out of vanity. We need to be able to sell up and move somewhere with a ground floor as well as a first floor next year, and leaving it is not a good option.

I was working pretty damn hard, and certainly not spending as much time near a computer as I was used to and now, writing it down, it doesn't sound that much at all, but I'm horribly behind on the Blog. We'll do our best to catch up.