Tiresome jobs come in small segments

Dear blog readers, it has been some time.


We have been occupied over the last few weekends with a stag do (Rob), birthday party (Siobhan), illness (Siobhan) and third world non-existent country (Siobhan).  So little work has been done in the slum - obviously whilst I was away, Rob was indisposed pining for me.


We have done a little - and when I say a little, I mean that little was achieved over a very, very, very, very long period of time.  Not because we weren't trying - the last sections of wallpaper to be removed were obviously papered by Beelzebub.

See those tiny, 5mm by 5mm squares of paper?  That's what we were managing to scrape off.  It took me four hours to clear a one metre square area of hallway wall.  I might mind slightly less if the paper was less offensive to look at for all that time - but it's dried mustard coloured, furry, 60's, and horrible.


And it's glued on with super glue.


The only way, and I mean the only way to get it off was to basically melt it.  I've never felt so close to a wallpaper steamer before.  Unfortunately I can't recommend the wallpaper facial as the latest in beauty therapy - too much risk of burning the extremities with very hot bits of wallpaper.  (You'd be surprised, dear reader, to know just how hot those tiny squares can get.  The scars on my legs can testify to this.)


The walls themselves don't think much of the melting strategy either - they start crying, see - 

Something else you'll notice from this photo is that large patch of no-plasterboard - the most galling part of this process is when large parts of the wall you've just painstakingly stripped of paper then falls away in your hands.  I feel like crying as much as the wall is.


Anyhow, away from the downstairs steam bath, the architect we have employed has started to renovate the upstairs bedrooms.  This appears to involve knocking holes in our walls and ceiling...

Oh dear.  And we loved that wall colour so much.