Ha hey! People are interested in our bed for sale... Ebay never ceases to amaze me... how do people stumble across our advert and decide to bid... it baffles me. Auction ends tomorrow so we will see what price we get in the end!
Started work on the back bedroom today. Cleared it. Got rid of the cork glued to the wall and was ready to prep the walls for paint, but then I thought that I may aswell use my new found skills for decorating and slap some wallpaper on. It would seem silly not to really. So back off to Homebase I went and picked up the 4.4 rolls of paper that I need to do the job. In only a few hours I had got nearly 3/4 of the room done so by tomorrow afternoon it should be all freshly papered and ready for a nice painting. 
Bare room ready for its make over
Just about to put up the first piece of paper
Half way through the job...
The end of day number one on room #2.
The house has been in chaos since I arrived with my bags, suitcases, boxes and utter mess that I seemed to bring back with me. Add into this mix decorating a room, with all the stuff from that room, my stuff and me being crammed into another room as part of the process. We are nearing completion on room #1 and pictures will follow in due course you lucky people.
So before all this chaos has been calmed I thought the best thing to do would be to make some more mess. So, I decided to start on the next major projet which was to redecorate Mattys old room which is now considered Sarah's room. It gets more complicated when you are walking around Ikea with Mum saying I like that [thing] it would go really well in the [room]. This conversation continues for five minutes until you are not only talking about completely different rooms, but actually rooms in completely different houses... hah! Very confusion!
Mum has also been clearing her office of all surplus paper and stuff. We managed to fill two sacks of paper recycling this week. The poor shredder has also been receiving a battering to foil all those nasty identity theifs who are lurking around our bins at night with the hope of finding one shred of paper with any personal information on them whatsoever. If you are reading this Mr Identity Thief.... i wouldnt bother wasting your time cos it aint gonna happen!
In other news, Matty this has arrived for you and will be packed in my suitcase for our trip. 
Ah this is better... i just worked out how to get the proper layout... D'oh!
Now this should be under this picture of my new chest of drawers....
And this text should be underneath the picture of my new slender wardrobe sans doors.
TESTING TESTING 123
OK I know im doing a lot of this testing nonsense but without picasa it is a bit of a pain... there has to be an easier way?
OK well the work is progressing quickly now. All the stuff we need is here and I just need to get on with it an build it now. Carpet was in on Friday. Bedside tables were straight in as they were pre built the day before. Big chest of drawers then needs to be constructed. I am very grateful for the fancy electric screwdriver Dad invested in... it saved me lots of time and a lot of blisters.
The blinds are actual wood but almost whitewashed effect to take the edge off them and soften the look a bit from plain wooden. They were ordered online with our measurements and were on our doorstep within 72 hours. Crazy! The office is now much lighter and brighter which is great. Shame about the faded wallpaper that was hidden behind those curtains... now this room has to be decorated too!
The one request I made for the journey back was to go and visit the Angel of the North. I love this bold and impressive piece of sculpture which jutts out from the top of a hill next to the motorway. Thank goodness for photoshop so I can make all those other nasty people on my pictures disappear... well thats the plan anyway.. ive not done it yet!
Here are a few pictures from my mini break up in Northumberland. Went around and about with my friend Roger who has had a couple of weeks off work to travel about. He had not been up around the north east of England before so thought he would like to have a look. I dont really remember going to many of the places before although Mum tells me that I definitely had. The beach and castle are at Bamburgh. Very impressive looking beach and it was a lovely day if not a little bit blustery.
Well painting is all done, bar the touching up here and there and we were waiting for the carpet man to come and measure up so I set to work clearing the way for our Ikea delivery on Monday.
Garage was fairly OK since our last clean out, but things do tend to accumulate. Mainly plastic bags and food rations for the next nuclear melt down this country might experience. The outside washing machine bit the dust after so nastily shorting our the house last time it was utilised, and a number of other items are now at the "Salford Household Recycling Centre" (I hope you imagined me doing the bendy fingers with those quotes Matt :-) hehe). My old carpet is now laid for a luxurious garage underfoot experience when one visits the outside beer fridge. It could also function as a quite adequate extra bedroom for any little piglet, especially today after I so lovingly vacuumed the whole garage!
The last picture is clearly not a tidy one, so this is going to be another days work at least I should imagine. I will try to control my OCD tendencies with regards to sorting and tidying but it may be hard to resist!
Anyway... off for a bit of a relaxing weekend now as I am out with Stef and Andy tonight and then off for a few days to Northumberland on Sunday... will post more then. Tata.
My heart jumped through my throat when I saw an email in my inbox from my uni titled "Thesis Submission 2006", as I thought it might have been an explanation of the unfortunate circumstances by which my whole project had been completely rubbished and that I would have to start all over again... anyway, it wasnt, it was just this lame-o photograph of me on the day I submitted all four copies of my work. I was supposed to have my picture with the new Lady Dean of Graduate Research at UNSW but she was too busy or picking her nose or something so didnt turn up. I got my blankety blank cheque book and pen prize ( a UNSW keyring ) and a scroll that says "CONGRATULATIONS!"... yeah great.
The whole affair was quite an anticlimax but that was to be expected. The whole thing is made worse by the fact that the lady taking the photo couldnt compose the shot without the two guys in the background having a heated debate about whether he could sack his supervisor cos he was an idiot...such is life. Also of mild interest is the building you can see in the background is actually where I worked... handy that.
So so so many blinds to choose from. It seems these days that there are literally hundreds of people who are willing to make custom blinds to fit seemingly any window (up to about 3m wide) and have them delivered to your door in 5 or sometimes even 3 days! Remarkable!
So last week I ordered a massive amount of samples to see which are the good ones and which ones are rubbish. The samples that arrived the next day get a big tick, you people who never even bothered to send anything... tutt tutt.
Here are the final four contenders... The furniture is going to be a light beech / birch Ikea finish. All comments are welcomed. The top one is a solid white glossy finish, second down a light coloured wood effect, third is a ceramic effect finish in ecru, and lastly a satin white finish perforated style. All are 25mm wide aluminium and all about the same price anyway.
We are off to Ikea tonight... they are open until midnight, and then will make our decisions based on that.
Second coats of paint on the walls and ceiling are finished and drying. Phew!
You can get an idea of our final design layout with the paper shapes cleverly placed on the floor to represent the furniture...
And a lovely carpet sample... the man is coming tomorrow to measure up and hopefully it will be down on the floor by next week!
Can you hear the gospel choir singing? Well this weekend was the straw that broke the camels back with Mum's internet connection... Paying an inordinate amount of money for an 'always on' connection that was barely on for more than 10 minutes from Friday to Sunday. Anyway... the nice lady at NTL booked an engineer to visit the same day and he came and gave us a new modem to boot. We also upgraded plans for a month to see if that makes a difference... we are now at a blistering 4Mbps (whoohoo dont laugh Matt Mr. 100000Mbps). Well needless to say with a new modem, improved connection and deleting all Mum's cookies (which took about 10 minutes) the connection is super quick. Full marks to NTL really for getting it sorted within 6 hours of the initial call... lets hope all things remain working smoothly... or else we will do the dreaded switch back to BT!
Im going to take some of these wallpapers and set up a market stall down at Swinton precinct doing my new 'Urban ultra modern temporary tattoos'... available in the classic Dulux colours of Morning Light and Timeless. Do you think they will catch on? 
Painted most of the day... Ceiling has had its first coat of Timeless rich matt emulsion and then started on the walls. This was chosen to be Morning Light of the Light and Space paint range, which is supposed to be twice as reflective to brighten the room. Its tough going though as it is a bobbly wallpaper so requires lots of pressure on the roller to get into all the nooks... makes my puny arms ache... so anyway... with all the edging that has to be done to complete the task I only got half way round the room, but the good news is that the walls around the window have their first coat. Only two pretty simple walls left to do... so all is good.
Just made it to the corner by tea time so a good point to stop. The walls will have a couple of days to dry as I am off to York for the Society for General Microbiology Annual Conference. Should be a laugh...not! Will be good to keep my hand in, and get my brain back into a more general science gear after being so concenrated on one thing for the last 3 years... scary!
My love of decorating started at an early age... Here I am aged 4 and a bit helping out Dad and my spaghetti legs brother Matty! Note the standard safety wear of the era... leather effect slipper to prevent nasty splinters from the big plank of wood on my delicate little feet.
To this day I still cannot really concentrate with my mouth closed. How exciting though... being able to spray a massive water pistol inside the house... right at the living room walls! How often do you get to do that?! Hmmm, I'm sure dungarees were not even in fashion in 1983, especially when sporting such a charming paunch... I'm convinced it is the result of wheat intolerance, well thats my story and im sticking to it!
I only worked out how to smile on photographs by the age of about 25. Clearly here I was not too cluey... safety first though... one hand on the rail at all times.
