The Ship's Company at HMS Drouseia are currently involved in high level DIY operations. The work is being carried out by the first Sea Lord (John) and his sometime trusty Part IV (me). The DIY fever has come about for a number of reasons - firstly seeing others on our estate having work done and secondly because we stripped the door surround to the shower room years ago when the cowboy tiler came and we have never got round to finishing it. I reckon we would have done had we been happy with the shower-room but John has always regretted not doing the job himself and so we never really had the incentive to get it completed but we can put it off no longer and looking at our ever growing list of 'things to do' this was one which seemed to be the least onerous and/or expensive.
We are struggling to remove the old gloss paint that has spot welded itself to the wooden surrounds. Whoever did it was (a) colourblind but more disappointingly (b) a good painter so this stuff went on, went on well and went on never to be removed - we know because we have tried!
We were unusually both home today (it being a Tuesday) so we were up mega-early and at it! Whilst I was undercoating bits of wood it made me think of Dad when we first moved over who would pitch up every day bright and early to help us with staining the many, many planks of wood which we used to build our boundary fencing. He was so brilliant helping us to get Villa 10B upgraded from a holiday rental to our home - as was Mum! In fact somewhere there is a photograph of the two of them knee deep in green sludge cleaning out our swimming pool.
There was really not much to say about today save that we worked our butts off and resorted to some fairly lethal paint remover in the end as no amount of elbow grease or sandpaper was going to make any inroads - this meant taking extra care with the cats and their little paws and it also meant that we were going to have to go to bed without any doors on the bedrooms or the shower room which was going to be a challenge not least because at about 5.30am the sun would be coming through and slapping us around the chops making sure we get up early and Charlie would be in and out trying to find somewhere to sleep and sometimes, given the opportunity, he has been known to get into the shower-room sink.
Sure enough we were up at the crack of sparrows and had a very productive day eventually getting all the paint stripped and the wood prepared with a coat of the pink undercoat paint which seems to hide a multitude of sins and even out the surface. We were pleased with our progress and happy that we had persevered with a shitty job.
We had Di and Rob for supper tonight - to be absolutely exact we had curry for supper tonight and Rob and Di joined us and it was really lovely just to have the four of us round the table so we could catch up. Rob arrived in the most pristine of white shirts which I pointed out might be have been a bad move bearing in mind what we were to eat but we swaddled him in serviettes so that it remained untouched, untouched by curry but not by beer!
It was a lovely evening apart from shrew-gate when Boris brought back in the shrew which I had rescued earlier - we managed to catch it and liberate it thank goodness. The curry was good, as was the company - summer can be difficult with friends and family around so it was nice to have a 'normal' friends for supper evening.
Too tired today to take photographs it would seem!!!
We are struggling to remove the old gloss paint that has spot welded itself to the wooden surrounds. Whoever did it was (a) colourblind but more disappointingly (b) a good painter so this stuff went on, went on well and went on never to be removed - we know because we have tried!
We were unusually both home today (it being a Tuesday) so we were up mega-early and at it! Whilst I was undercoating bits of wood it made me think of Dad when we first moved over who would pitch up every day bright and early to help us with staining the many, many planks of wood which we used to build our boundary fencing. He was so brilliant helping us to get Villa 10B upgraded from a holiday rental to our home - as was Mum! In fact somewhere there is a photograph of the two of them knee deep in green sludge cleaning out our swimming pool.
There was really not much to say about today save that we worked our butts off and resorted to some fairly lethal paint remover in the end as no amount of elbow grease or sandpaper was going to make any inroads - this meant taking extra care with the cats and their little paws and it also meant that we were going to have to go to bed without any doors on the bedrooms or the shower room which was going to be a challenge not least because at about 5.30am the sun would be coming through and slapping us around the chops making sure we get up early and Charlie would be in and out trying to find somewhere to sleep and sometimes, given the opportunity, he has been known to get into the shower-room sink.
Sure enough we were up at the crack of sparrows and had a very productive day eventually getting all the paint stripped and the wood prepared with a coat of the pink undercoat paint which seems to hide a multitude of sins and even out the surface. We were pleased with our progress and happy that we had persevered with a shitty job.
We had Di and Rob for supper tonight - to be absolutely exact we had curry for supper tonight and Rob and Di joined us and it was really lovely just to have the four of us round the table so we could catch up. Rob arrived in the most pristine of white shirts which I pointed out might be have been a bad move bearing in mind what we were to eat but we swaddled him in serviettes so that it remained untouched, untouched by curry but not by beer!
It was a lovely evening apart from shrew-gate when Boris brought back in the shrew which I had rescued earlier - we managed to catch it and liberate it thank goodness. The curry was good, as was the company - summer can be difficult with friends and family around so it was nice to have a 'normal' friends for supper evening.
Too tired today to take photographs it would seem!!!
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