Finally, at last….

While much of Australia has been burning, carpet has been on my mind this week. [Catch up on the fires from Meek’s and Kate’s posts.]

Let me set the scene….

My house was built in c.1910 in the Victorian style ~ a long hallway down the side of the house, leading to the lounge, kitchen, dining area down the back. The bedrooms are off the hallway.

Ages ago we had the place reblocked [ie replacing the stumps that the housesits on]. All the baltic pine floorboards were removed 😞 and replaced with sheets of brown board called yellow tongue. The skirting boards were off and the hall became a dumping ground. It stayed that way for ages.

Why it languished like that is a long and boring story that I won’t go into. It involved procrastination ~ lots of procrastination ~ and exasperation and convoluted plans for under the house [don’t ask!].

Fixing the hall was always on my To Do List, moving from month to month and year to year. A couple of years ago I had a burst of enthusiasm and project managed us into painting the hall from a butter yellow to a plain white. The skirting boards were sanded and painted, in a delightfully named paint, ‘Pale Lady’. That’s a lot of skirting boards, as the hall is 12 metres long!

Then things stalled again. In another burst of enthusiasm we got things out of storage. ‘Things’ were mainly boxes of my books, stored when we did the reblocking, which had no where else to go but be piled up in hall.

So here we were, with boxes of books and other stuff, skirting boards leaning against the walls, noisy flooring and draughts. I had had enough. No more procrastination, no more “I need to do this [insert long term unrealistic plan in here] before we get the carpet down”, I was determined. I was also determined that we were going to outsource as much as possible. No unrealistic plans for us doing it ourselves.

This photo shows the hall in a rather respectable state, with only some of the piles of stuff.

First job was to get our handyman friend, Ron, to put the skirting boards back on. He was so willing and available, many thanks to him.

Second job was to choose the carpet. The hall is not only long but rather dark. The carpet needed to be light and have an interest down the length of the space. Most of the choices were dull, but as soon as I saw the right one I knew it was the Right One.

So, I ordered, paid, organised the layer to come. We moved boxes and book cases and stuff; we vacuumed; and I waited for The Day to finally come.

Brett, the carpet layer arrived on time and was an immediate whirlwind of activity.

 

Our only glitch was the front door. We had to take it off and shave a centimetre from the bottom, to allow for the new height of the carpet and underlay. While the Fella did the cutting and I did the supervising, Brett did the heavy lifting of taking the door off and then putting it back on. I was so grateful!

Our rather forlorn front door

Brett cleared all the scraps up and was gone, off to his next job, leaving us with a miracle!

It is soft, it is quiet, it is wonderful ~blissful sigh~ 

And it is DONE! No more hurrying down the hall with down cast eyes. These are areas of the house to be proud of.

The hearth in the bedroom was another one of those “One day we will fix this up” things. No more, because I decided to cover the whole thing up with carpet….. problem solved!

Let me show off, just a little more….

Note the clear and dust free surface of the bedside table!

Ahh, I could bore you for hours and insist on showing you more photos; instead I am going to walk up and down on my new carpet in my bare feet….and maybe even vacuum it again!!

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P.S. I mentioned my brother in my last post, another whirlwind, helping us clear the garden of weeds. He was chuffed that so many of you asked whether he would come and do your gardens. However, he wanted you to know that if you live in Japan he will be there in on the next plane, anywhere else, sorry, he’s a no show. ☺️