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?

Week twelve - Siobhan should go away more often

Sorry for the blog silence - it wasn't because the slum had been bought by a local millionaire after seeing our awesome progress with it, or because Kevin McCloud had finally realised that it was a big mistake not to feature us on Grand Designs and so I was bound by a secrecy contract, or because we finally lost our minds in Ikea and gave up on the whole project.  Except that Rob almost did.

No, the reason for the silence is because I've been backpacking round China for the last three weeks, and so 

1) I wasn't in Nunhead to see slum progress
2) I was behind the Great Chinese (Fire) Wall so couldn't access the blog even if I had wanted to
3) I left Rob in charge of blogging

and

4) Rob lost his mind in Ikea.

Oh dear.  

There were tears, tantrums, and I wasn't around to witness any of them.  Rob maintains that this was A Good Thing, but I suspect it was actually A Very Bad Thing and I really should have been there to help share the stress.  Or at least prevent Very Bad Things happening to the poor assistants in Ikea.

To summarise an extremely lengthy and frustrating story, it took Rob more than four hours, and multiple trips to two different branches of Ikea on opposite sides of London to order a few items of furniture.  It would have been quicker if I'd have popped into the Shanghai branch whilst I was there.  He is in fact still there as I type, picking up yet another light fitting.

In the grand scheme of things, this is annoying but will mean that, in the worst case, we will be sitting on cushions for the next few weeks.

Except that cushions are banned in Rob's minimalist flat so we may be standing.  

Anyway, my three week absence has meant that this week's blog will be as spectacular to you as the big reveal of all the recent work was to me today.  Here we go!

That's Rob, lost in a snowdrift demonstrating the new, very white, hallway.

Here's a close up of the newly painted stairs:

And at the top of those stairs, this is the brand new sliding door to the mezzanine bathroom.  Rob is VERY pleased it with, as you can tell by his smug, beardy expression (pining over me whilst I was away apparently resulted in some suspect facial hair):

Look!  It opens and everything!

This is the lovely new shower in that bathroom:

And the sink and bathroom cabinet (so shiny!):

And now, prepare yourselves - here is your first view of the new kitchen, all completed!  SQUEAL!

It is LOVELY.  LOVELY.  

Rob then proceeded to demonstrate just how much cooking I would be able to do for him, in this new lovely kitchen.  Which was lovely.

Here's the new sink, with that nice tap I chose:

Which, Rob reminds me, we won't be using, because that right hand unit is the dishwasher.

Here's a view of the very lovely quartz worktop.  It's very shiny, and very cold.  Which is ideal for making pastry, as Rob helpfully pointed out.  Lots of pastry items that I can then cook for him in the lovely oven.

Now, in Rob's Ikea-induced delirious rage, because he was unable to actually get hold of the things we need (sofas, beds - nothing really important or anything), he decided to buy other really important things, like laundry bins and mini step ladders.

Why a mini step ladder I hear you ask?

Because this is the shelf he has kindly provided for me to put my cookery books on:

Hard to see in our snowstorm-themed house, but trust me, that shelf is at least a foot above the top of my head.

Onwards to the study, where we find this mysterious item, left by the builders:

Goodness knows what they needed a tennis ball for.  Especially since this room is really more similar to a squash court.

In the sitting room, some of the lighting has been installed, including this up-lighter that Rob is again, very proud of:

The light for this end of the sitting room is arriving from Italy, at some point between now and next year - the Italians are delightfully laissez faire about the delivery schedule (or whatever the Italian equivalent is).

Builder's tea break update time: I still can't see where the vinegar has gone, but the biscuit of choice this week is a dark chocolate digestive:

Moving upstairs (here's the view of the hallway):

The upstairs bathroom is looking very shiny, and almost finished:

Luckily Rob fits in the shower cubicle, and is demonstrating here his amazing ability to open shower cubicle doors using only the power of his mind:

The hanging rail has been installed in the bedrooms:

Back downstairs, the scary asbestos electrical situation still hasn't been sorted out, and neither have the library shelves.  That big cardboard box contains the light fitting for the hall though - you'll have to wait for the reveal!  

PS - isn't the window lovely.

Finally, Rob was showing me the light bulbs he has bought when I spotted this on the upper shelf in the kitchen:

That's dishwasher tablets.  Rob has made sure we have our priorities right.  Who needs sofas if you can do the washing up.

And look how sweet our builders are.  They are walking around in plastic shoe covers to make sure they don't ruin our lovely new floors.  We are currently considering whether we will ask all our visitors to do the same...