Sink hole

Full work day today. I headed off early to the MBH to paint and strip wallpaper.... well, I would have done had Mr B not lost the keys... and had I not had to take a diversion to the petrol station as the car was nearly empty... Still, despite the late start I managed to get lots done. Meanwhile, Mr B had dropped the kids off at their French lesson and headed off for another delightful trip to Leroy Merlin (DIY store with the worst customer service you could imagine).

After lunch, more DIY including building a frame for our unfeasibly large Belfast sink (we swore two houses ago that we'd never have another as building the base was so complicated, but here we are again) and the bit of furniture shown above for the wash basin in the WC. In the background is the strapped out wall of our dressing room, and a bunch of stuff that - I'm told by Mr B - it is my job as labourer to keep control of and know where everything is. Ha ha ha.

Wallpaper stripping and painting skirting boards are things I can cope with - not trying to keep up with exactly which of the many drills Mr B means when he urgently shouts "pass me the drill". Anyway. The results of my measuring and his sawing, drilling, joining are quite lovely. I think.

I am beginning to have some warning signs about my age though: I think this might be my last renovation (friends will recall that I said that in 2002, I mean it this time though). Yesterday I was scraping wallpaper off around the skirting board and kept stopping because I could hear this funny noise: it sounded like someone trying to get into the house but unable to open the door. Every time I stopped scraping, the noise stopped. Eventually (really after a very long time) I figured out that it was just the creaking of my knees. And today I tripped over a bit of evil metal partitioning and fell full length on some plasterboard with my not-quite-clean-yet paint brush. If you are like Mr B, you will immediately want to know if I wiped the watery/painty marks off the plasterboard before it had a chance to stain (of course I did). If you are not like Mr B, you may follow it up with a supplementary question about whether I hurt myself (badly grazed hand and left wrist sprained, thanks for asking). Mr B's lack of concern plus his inability to remember the one thing I asked him to get from the shops (chocolate, of course) leaves him with a little catching up to do.

And today it seems that every time I look at the news the death toll in Norway grows. All those young lives.