Decorating update

Great, room #2 has carpet now so just a bit of furniture to go in and some bedding and were all done with the decorating before our trip to Oslo! Hurrah! More pictures will follows as the bits get built and put into the room. Not sure how the bed is going to get through the door yet as it is a bit of a funny angle... cant mess up the walls either! Ugg




These are the mystery flowers that were delivered with the card only saying "Thanks". Very odd dont you think? Nice flowers though.

Ants Wedding (Take II)

You might remember from my previous post that I am prone to camera shake, or more importantly having my camera set on the wrong settings at the wrong time. Consequently my photos of Ant's wedding were crap and I had to wait for my friend Heidi to send me her pictures.

One of the four bridesmaids. This one is his sister Julia pictured with his Dad Karan




Caroline, me, Anna and Heidi


Ant and Anna


Karan and Janet



Mr and Mrs Horn

Aber

Lovely views from the top by the waterfall. There was lots of evidence of the Aber ponies on the paths, but it wasnt until we got up to the top that we actually saw some of the actual beasts.

Hello boys and girls. We are fresh off the motorway from Wales after Friday and Saturday there. As you can see it was not cloudless but it was certainly a lovely day out to Aber falls on Saturday.

Ebay miracle

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!

Room #2

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.

Building up to the big reveal...

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.

Testing yet again...

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.

Above








Below picture

TEST


BELOW PICTURE



BELOW SECOND PICTURE

Just another Test

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?

Global warming...

Global warming..., originally uploaded by tconibear78.

Global warming...

Global warming..., originally uploaded by tconibear78.

Global warming...

Global warming..., originally uploaded by tconibear78.

DIY Day

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!

My angel...

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!

Not so grim up North!

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.

Day of work...

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.

Handing in...

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.

 

Now I see.....

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!