In Which Our Heroine Discovers Once Again That Some Things Really Need Two People

I have been fired up to do DIY recently, partly inspired by the success of the garage door and partly driven by the knowledge that when winter is really here I won’t be stirring far from the fire let alone going up ladders.

The title of this blog is explained by my attempts to repair a hole in the plaster of the kitchen ceiling.

 

Now my plastering skills aren't brilliant and I know it would look better if a real plasterer did it but this is about frugal living, unlike one of my neighbours, I cannot call in the professionals even if ‘he was ever so reasonable, only £500’.

So there were two alternatives either a) live with a hole in the ceiling (I’d tried that option for the last 18 months) or b) try to fill the hole with plasterboard and plaster over the joins.

Oh dear.

This is where I needed a second pair of hands. I discovered that when standing at the top of a stepladder trying to balance a piece of plasterboard against the ceiling with one hand, while reaching for the prop to hold it in place with the other and then watching the prop slip out of reach and fall onto the floor.  By the end of the day, I’d discovered several more things , most importantly that the plasterboard adhesive just wasn't going to cut it and  a belt and braces operation involving screwing it into the ancient laths was also needed.

However I did manage to get most of the hole filled in.

It then just needed a couple of smaller pieces of plasterboard and the gaps filling in, but the weather has been so good over the last week that I was seduced into working in the garden instead.

When the BT engineer came last week, my garden looked like this

Now it looks like this:

I decided to sacrifice the lilac tree, which does have its moment of glory in May but then spends the rest of the year either casting a shade over the garden or demanding I prune it.

I didn't do it all by myself, I had help:

Once I have got the roots out, which will be a job and a half in itself, I want to replace it with a dwarf cherry tree which will match the lilac for pretty blossom in spring but then give wonderful fruit in summer. I will put two or three gooseberry cuttings in front of the wall where the brambles were running wild and then the rest of the garden will be filled with herbs and salad plants. I do have a hankering for training a grape vine round the doorway though which led to the realisation that I really must paint it first.

I’m ashamed to say, that I think some of it (the orange bits ) are still the way they were when we moved in twenty five years ago and not unreasonably are in very poor condition.

Yesterday, I sanded and painted all the bits I could reach with a stepladder. Unfortunately the green paint I’d used on the garage door ran out halfway through the front door.

I’d already decided that this green was a bit too bright and I was going to find a darker one but then when I went to the shop this morning, there was my paint at £6.80 a tin or the market leader at £17.95. Maybe the brightness will fade over the winter.

So today’s task is painting, but tomorrow I may well be back up the ladder wrestling with the kitchen ceiling as the weather forecast is rain for the rest of the week. It doesn't really matter which I’m doing, either will move me closer to the sort of house I want to be living in.