I’m trying to persuade myself to restart working on the house. It’s hard though, there are so many places that are ‘nearly done’ and many frustrating little jobs that need doing. It’s my fault for my lackadaisical approach to completing rooms. Once they’re fairly much nice and liveable I have a terrible tendency to stop (which is why when you look at The List there’s lots of small jobs on it).
The distressing thing is after today there are only 5 days in February where I don’t have stuff planned and am not at work. I’m also giving a teaching session at work about sepsis, and so one of those days will be spent panicking about doing so. However, I can feel the vague urge to work on the house increasing from the ‘I should be working on the house’ background hum into an uncomfortable sensation that I’m really letting myself down by not finishing the house off. It helps that whilst I was staring at a problem section this morning, sucking my coffee down, I realised what the answer was.
We have a doorframe where the trim piece (all our door frames still have their original 1930s trim) was cut off at the edge when the house was built (to install it around the built-in cupboard). That built-in cupboard was so very literally built in, incidentally. There was no plaster behind it, that’s how built in it was.
Anyhow, I’ve stared at this trim trying to decide how to restore it, because whilst I do have some spare lamb’s tongue trim saved from another doorframe, because we’ve now plastered the wall and the plaster stands out further than the original brickwork on which the trim was mounted, it wasn’t simply a case of pulling off the old trim and putting new on. Also, my experience with this stuff suggests that ‘simply pulling off’ isn’t something that happens in this house. The entire house appears to have been constructed with a “It’s never coming down” attitude, which is nice, but involves more nails, screws, and assorted other fixings than you can get at B&Q’s distribution depot.
Anyhow, I’ve come up with a solution that I don’t feel is entirely hideous, which has encouraged me to think that maybe I should get started on making the door fit the frame.
Once that’s done then I need to go and buy the paint, which means I really ought to go and try the tester pot out, since we’ve got it and it’s been sat around upstairs since before christmas.
Hrm, I can almost feel the urge to ‘do something’. Writing about how lazy I’ve been is generally what’s needed to push me into doing something. First thing I need to do is find the plane; I suppose; which means treking down the marshland to our garage. Meh. Shower, find plane, [remove hinges from door], plane door. There’s a plan.
In other news our roofer, who had been utterly silent, randomly e-mailed today to say he’s going to book scaffolding soon. Whee.
