Getting things done...

I could blame the fact that my lovely friend Hazel is coming for a visit soon for the flurry of DIY activity in the Wiseman household but that would be a lie - it is guilt that jobs have been left undone so this morning I was up with the larks or even before the larks so that I could get cracking with the door-frames before going off for art at Sheila and Klaus's.

I made good progress and John has been inspired too so all sorts of things are getting spruced up and I love it because our little house is our forever home - we cannot envisage living anywhere else and so we want it to be the best it can be.

I drove down to Sheila's because I wanted to call in on Dad before going to Art.  Today I had to tell him that his brother had passed away yesterday but hopefully if there is an afterlife then they will be together again catching up on the intervening years.  Apparently they were little buggers when they were young boys - I remember a story about them tar and feathering someone's bike just because they didn't like him - when they were questioned about their involvement they couldn't lie, they had rolled the barrel back home and forgotten to replace the bung so that every circuit of the barrel a dollop of tar was dispatched onto the road leaving a trail a bit like the bread in Hansel and Gretel.

I finished my current picture of the poppies today.  I enjoyed doing this picture probably because it was a lot less detailed than my previous one so I could see rapid progress each week.  I need to get this framed now and for it to find a home - it doesn't really go anywhere in our house so if anyone would like it then please let me know.  Even more importantly I need to find something to inspire me for my next picture and I am struggling in that regard.

I got back home and John had been really busy and was washing the shutters down having removed them and I was given the job of cleaning the tracking and the window sills which were really dusty and dirty - much as I might hate it, cleaning is somewhat cathartic!

So here is the little hallway with our bedroom door, the bathroom door and the spare bedroom door rehung - the door frames are now cream eggshell and not nicotine brown gloss and the walls have been freshly painted with Magnolia emulsion - all the doors have new hinges, handles and escutcheons and we are still trying to decide whether to paint them a lighter colour or leave them as they are.  It all looks lighter and brighter and cleaner.

Knackered from all our hard work we cleaned up, showered and then retired to the back garden for a well earned beer.  There are still things we would like to do with this area but time and finances are running out.  We had thought about putting down a solid base rather than sit the table and chairs on the shingle and then we would like to construct some sort of shade more permanently than the current brolly (which is no use at the moment as the winter winds ravaged the material and I need to repair it).

We were remarking on how beautiful the bougainvillea looks this year which is amazing after we had thought it had died last year and on the day we were going to rip it out it showed some tiny little green shoots and so it got a reprieve.  Last year it didn't buck its ideas up until about July!!!!  This year it is just a mass of colour.

We sat in the relative cool and but together our plan of action for tomorrow when I am at home with John as we have more than enough players for pickleball.  I have more door-frames to paint - the other toilet had one coat some time ago (more than a year I think) and we never got round to giving it another!