a mediocre workman blames the substrate

Considering our unparalleled ability to string out DIY tasks for much longer than is strictly necessary, April 2009 to February 2010 isn't particularly long to have waited to complete the reinstallation of skirting-board following the replastering. The dragging-out of the job itself has only really been over the past few months since buying the original two lengths of board and was partially due to realising that the significant increase in depth of the wall caused by the addition of the plaster meant that the new skirting would not be able to pass between the wall and the radiator feed-pipes, though this was not discovered until the radiator had been re-hoicked off the wall and the pipes (lightly damaged by the careless plasterer) gingerly tested to see how much play there was at their ends. As fitting boards round the pipes would mean committing to accepting the lightly-kinked radiator feed-pipe (only done (and then not lightly) several weeks after the original radiator-fitting people supplied a laughably absurd quote for pipe-repair) the other end of the room was done first, consisting mostly of the less fiddly bits except for the join with the cupboard-frame on a wall curving concavely through several more degrees than walls really ought to. Such walls make the use of strong screws rather than weak nails necessary rather than merely more sensible; another thing making the ability to quickly remove sections without having to piss about with a claw hammer is that we might still decide to run the telephone cable behind these to pieces so that the telephone socket can be sensibly located next to the plug just out of shot to the left into which the router which must be plugged.

Despite carefully optimising cuts in the original two lengths I was still left with two end-pieces of about 800mm when I still needed one bit of 90mm, one bit of 1m and another of 600mm so popped to buy another length this morning, taking a pocket-sized offcut with me to ensure the new stuff matched (though it was still close, with the wood-vending-assistance-man initially selecting something of the same profile but forty significant millimetres fewer in height). A trip to the cinéma interrupted further work until the late afternoon but (save for the pipe-gaps around the pipes just to the left at the back which might be lightly plugged with small wood-pieces where such wood-pieces would stand zero chance of ever even lightly threatening to go anywhere near the delicate kinked pipe) all the skirtable walls are now skirted, imperfectly in places where twisting walls and uneven floor prevent precise fitting (at least in the time available and with the tools to hand, currently excluding any planing device except for a rubbish little blunt surform) but sufficiently well to hopefully prevent the easy access and exit of our mouse*, which shall have to sneak in and out underneath the kitchen plinths like everyone else from now on.

*If my mother is reading this: I often make up fake household rodents for comedy purposes and in no way should this entry be taken to imply that you have several times stayed overnight in a room in which the presence of mice had been previously visually confirmed.