A tale of two pouffes

It's been over 18 months.  Ooops.  

Blog silence has been at least partly caused by competing matters for my attention.  In the past 18 months I have done this:

(70.3 Ironman)

This:

(Team Ski 2014)

This:

(Paris Marathon)

And this:

(London Ride 100)

(I'm on the right)

Rob has done some stuff too.

Oh, and we did this:

Not the kissing thing, the getting engaged thing.

So having sorted that out, I felt ready to tackle the blog again.  And Rob tells me that an alarming number of people think we are still living in a part-finished flat, because for them time stood still at the end of the last blog post.  Perfectly reasonable assumption, but a bit distressing (we might procrastinate, but we aren't quite that bad).

I also felt it was important to update the blog because a VERY IMPORTANT THING HAS HAPPENED.

We have bought a new chair.  Not particularly momentous sounding, I know.  But bear with me.

We went back to the place we got most of our lights from, and spent a surprising length of time sitting, getting up, sitting, getting up, making 'mmm' noises, sitting, getting up...

Rob especially enjoyed this chair, fitting in as it does with the white theme:

"Do you expect me to buy this chair?!"

"Why no Mr. Blackett, I expect you to pose in it for a photo opportunity like everyone else who comes in this shop and then buy something far more sensible!"

Something far more sensible was clearly a cowhide chaise lounge in my opinion, but oddly Rob didn't agree.

Rob rather liked this one, despite the cowhide.  And very useful in case either of us gain several stone around our thighs.

Since I was not allowed the cowhide chaise lounge, I campaigned for this lovely green elephant chair:

But I was overruled in favour of this.  It's called the orange slice.  (really).

(sorry about Rob's hideous shoes photo bombing there)

It is an extremely relaxing chair, as you can see by Rob's zen demeanour here.

Also here, for the first time, is Rob's new favourite thing - his tape measure.  I think it makes him feel extra manly.  It's very long.  Other people in the furniture shop asked to borrow it.  I think that was probably the highlight of his day.

Other than the chair, we are also looking for a side board for the sitting room.  Since we have decided to get married, Rob has decided that we need somewhere to store napkins and spare cutlery.  This wasn't the case before, but the second he got the ring on my finger, napkin storage became really important.

Here's Rob assessing how many napkins might fit inside this sideboard:

And finally, this shop also offers some essential household items that might interest your average middle-class Londoner.  No home is complete without a wooden paddle to store your vodka glasses on:

Next, on a wave of positive vibes from the wedding plans, Rob announced today that he felt it was time for a rematch with I**a.  This time, it would be Team G-B versus the Nordic nightmare.  Strap yourselves in....

We were in the market for more bedroom furniture and some pouffes.  Who isn't, on a Saturday morning?  Whilst an L-shaped sofa was previously sufficient for his needs, Rob recently decided that the new fashionable letter to aim for was actually a U, and this could only be achieved with the addition of some pouffes.  So we were off.

Now you may recall that our previous trip(s) to I**a had included some extremely stressful hours spent in the car park trying to compress 2000 litres of furniture into the 1180 litres offered by the boot space of our Skoda Fabia.  I know it's 1180 litres, because I had to panic-phone my Dad in the queue to pay in I**a 4 minutes before closing time with mountains of flat pack furniture, trying to calculate the conversion between cubic volume in litres and the piles of cardboard in front of me.  

So this time, we were READY.

But somehow, we were still standing at the checkout with these boxes and worried faces.

But this time, we had a secret weapon.  Rob had his TAPE MEASURE.

Here it is again in action:

TEA BREAK

(bonus tape measure shot)

And Rob told me he was just going to get a 'quick snack':

Despite not batting an eyelid at the 'quick snack', and not being allowed the elephant chair earlier, I still wasn't allowed a panda from the pile-'o'-pandas  :-(

There are lots of slightly sad, under-stuffed pandas in I**a who need a loving home.  I wasn't allowed to have one in the slum, but perhaps you will be.

We did manage to fit it all in the boot (no pandas), but not without Rob deciding that the most fun way to pack a car in a busy car park in I**a on a Saturday morning is to create a rule that you must chant the correct name of the product you are trying to pack in the car, before being allowed to put it in.

HILARIOUS.

So we had a lot of this:

Karlstad!
Ribba!
Karlstad!
Gurli!
SIOBHAN YOU HAVE TO SAY THE NAMES!
Karlstad!
Nyttja!
Stromby!
Stromby!
SIOBHAN!!!!
Tofto!
Pluggis!
SIOBHAN!!!!  PLUGGIS!!!!

So that was fun.

On arrival back at the slum Rob did all the pouffe assembly:

He tells me that he is going to leave the other furniture assembly until the weekend that the orange slice chair also arrives and requires assembling, on the basis that he 'might as well do it all at the same time'.  You'll be relieved to know that I've arranged to be out of the country, and in fact on a different continent, on that particular weekend.

So, some final thoughts from this weekend.  

I initially misread this sign in I**a as 'Thanks everyone for using flapjacks'

And I**a do BEER.  Well, Ol Ljus Lager Lager Beer, but who's quibbling when you've already got your tape measure out all over the shop.

Here's Rob demonstrating not only the pouffes, but also the lager lager beer.

Postscript

I hear you shout "but what's the point of this blog post Siobhan? You promised us some VERY IMPORTANT THING but nothing has happened so far apart from some gratuitous tape measuring".





The orange slice chair is RED.

Sometimes, only Dad-skills will do

*FANFARE*

 We've moved in!

Now, just moving in was far too easy a challenge for us.  So we thought we'd move in between Christmas and New Year.  And host a New Year's Eve party.  And have my parents to stay the week after.  

So that wasn't stressful at all.

Of course, it would have been a lot less stressful if we didn't have to put together a whole house worth of I**a furniture, as well as packing, unpacking, and cleaning.  And cooking for 20+ people.

So, step one: put together the headboard for the bed.

Ta da!

Lovely.  I recognise that that's a bit difficult to see, what with everything being white and all.  Get used to it, people.

Step two: put together the bed.

No photos to show you here.  Why?  Because constructing it took Rob the same amount of time as it took me to pack up an entire flat, move it round the corner, unpack it, clean the new flat, and clean the old flat.  And cook dinner.  Every time I went to check on progress, I found him squatting on the floor, staring in an increasingly wild way at various pieces of white wood, every now and again muttering about screws and rawlplugs.  He emerged 9 hours later looking haggard, and, frankly, with elements of PTSD.  We don't talk about it.  Don't ask him about it.  Suffice to say, I**a haven't redeemed themselves in his eyes at all.

Step three: put together the sofas.

Easier than the beds, but my goodness, putting the covers on is almost certainly more difficult than child birth*.  The sofa sections are also remarkably heavy, tempting us to leave them as a modern art installation (Nunhead on the rocks):

But we didn't, you'll be pleased to hear.

It will interest you to know that the Prime Minister of Denmark has this sofa (at least, she does in Borgen.)

Step four: replace the front door.

We didn't do this ourselves.  A nice Irish man, with his nice Polish friend arrived at 8am on a Saturday morning to do it.  With his pneumatic drill.  Our neighbours may never forgive us.

Here's the old door, being used as a table for some reason:

And here's a close up of the new door - complete with James Bond style steel bolts.  Rob tells me that it would be easier to get through the wall with a battering ram than through the door.    

It's the same one as the door in the art vault at Christie's.  I haven't yet tested whether it's the same key.

(their's may not be blue).

After all this industrious-ness, we ran out of steam.  And power tools.  And skills.

There was only one thing for it.

We needed a Dad.

Here's mine!  (he's the one on the left).  

Note Rob's reversion to the role of the nine-year old child, watching Dad-skills in action using a jigsaw.

Dad then turned his hand to putting up our light fittings.

First: stand on a ladder.

Second: realise you should have turned off the mains power first.

Third: realise you don't have the required Dad-skills to complete the job and let a Dad get on with it.

Four: panic because Dad's head has been replaced by a Danish light fitting.

Five: stand back and admire your handiwork.

The Prime Minister of Denmark has this light fitting.

Having put this one up, Rob and Dad decided that putting light fittings up would be much easier in the daylight.  So the Italian light for the dining table had to wait until the next day.  Plus, it was becoming tricky to cook dinner in the dark.

Now, the Italian light is heavy.  And awkward.  And the ceilings are high.  So some scaffolding was required in order to support the light during installation.  Hmmm....

We don't have any scaffolding, so Dad decided to practice his Chinese acrobat chair balancing trick instead.

And... drum roll....

Here it is!

This one is not owned by the Prime Minister of Denmark, but I bet she wishes it was.

Here it is from outside:

And I know you can't see it from this photo, but the house does look rather nice in the snow.

So only a few more things to go, then we are finished.

Don't tell Rob, but there's another I**a bed to construct.




*almost certainly not

Week thirteen - so close...

We are very, nearly, almost, not quite, getting there.  Almost.

The darned evil that is I**a (I cannot bring myself to type their name in full anymore) are still conspiring to make sure we are standing in the slum for ever more, but we will not be beaten and Rob is poised to buy a supply of swiss balls if they still won't deliver our sofas this side of 2015.  White swiss balls, obvs.

(I suspect this is a further hint from him that he'd really rather I had Jessica Ennis' abs, but nonetheless).

So.  The bike storage area is ready.  The bike racks have arrived.  The two have yet to be married together.

The LED light strips for under the kitchen cabinets have arrived, but have yet to be introduced to the kitchen units.

The beds have arrived, but are in the wrong room (hard to tell, I know, in the oasis of whiteness) and are still in pieces.

The mirrors have arrived.  But unfortunately Rob turned out not to have learnt from the dining room table experience and didn't measure the space they were intended to go into.  Instead, he  decided to act on his alpha male instincts and 'just bought the biggest ones I**a had'.

*sigh*

The bookshelves have arrived, but they are the wrong size for books.  (Don't ask).

But enough of the negatives.  (there's another white joke in there somewhere, I'm sure).

We have a health-and-safety-approved banister (which will also be perfect for our Stannah StairLift in 50 years time):

 The LED strip in the bathroom upstairs has been installed:

(feel free to go 'ooooooooh')

The bathroom cabinets are in:

('aaaaaaaaah, so shiny!)

The boiler has been boxed in, so the kitchen is complete:

And, and - VERY EXCITINGLY..........

Our light fitting for the library has arrived!

Behold the lovely artichoke light!

It is OBLIGATORY to ooooh and aaaaaah at this point.

Unfortunately Rob had another slight competence issue about the sizing of light bulbs, so we can't actually switch it on at the moment.

So we are nearly, nearly there.  I see this last push before Christmas has meant that builder's tea break time has taken on a carb-loading theme:

Almost there.  Very nearly complete.

Oh, we don't yet have a front door though.  Minor detail, yes?