I have just started a month of holidays (tra la tra lee, yippee and other expressions of joy) and thought the next four weeks would find me doing alot of nothing.
That’s right, a huge amount of nothing, with a side of nothing and a sprinkle of nothing on top.
It all started with a gentle discussion about the (eventual) need to render my house – there’s been a miscellaneous amount of re-pointing done by several peeps, so rendering will make everything look “uniform”.
To render, one first has to complete the re-pointing to fix problems like this:
There's a hole in the mortar, dear tacha, a hole
Well and good, but it suddenly appears DIY Dad has decided that these holidays are the ones where I shall fix this problem.
To that end, he has given me a demonstration of re-pointing using a trowel (0:43 of the video below) and, as a result, I have decided if I am going to do this on my holidays, then I would rather use a mortar gun (1:52 of the video below):
Which looks a little like a icing syringe or a piping bag (cake decorating stuffs)…
If you have moved away from a house with a corkscrew, check the wine you are purchasing is a screwtop before you purchase it and take it home to enjoy.
The same applies to beer and bottle openers – now is not the time to purchase imported beers which require a bottle opener to get to their beer-y glory.
I’ve been quietly chipping away at the studio, in addition to collecting magnets as part of outskirts – nothing like home decoration on the cheap!
So I am slowly, but surely turning this:
it's like all my creative pursuits exploded over the one room
Into a room that I can a) get into; b) paint and create stuff in and c) store drunken house guests in need of a sleep over.
As you can see, at the moment I can’t even get into the room to do a) and b) and c) could result in some injured friends (on the plus side, if they are drunk enough then they are unlikely to feel their injury let alone remember it…)
The start of the process was to scooch into the limited real estate behind the expedit and paint the skirtings.
Given the small space left behind the expedit, that part of the experience was a little bit The Great Escape-ish only without the prison camp guards, scoops of dirt, disguised entrance and the other POWs:
Ok - where's my steve mcqueen?
Once the skirtings were dry, DIY Dad had to help me move the expedit back to the wall:
Still no steve mcqueen...what could possibly be keeping him?
So that I could then put all my unfinished canvases against the wall and rearrange the rest of the room so that I could get to the skirtings on the other side of the room:
Unfinished canvas classification system being developed
It turns out I have alot of unfinished canvases atm:
Maybe steve is behind the canvases?
DIY Dad is currently over my house taking the handle off the door of the studio-slash-guest room so that I can paint the other side of the room.
Once that is done, I can set up the studio and then move onto sorting out the office:
All it needs is a little organisation and alot of storage
Surprisingly, the transition of her majesty from chez vieux to chez nouveaux (aka her majesty’s Azkhaban for the next month) went…rather well.
The most strenuous part was transporting her to her new abode in Airforce One (aka my car). This involved 30 minutes of beyond piteous crying, panting and at one point, my finger joints being bent backwards – a direction they don’t usually go.
Now that she is in, there is the occasional miaow but other than that, she is mostly fine – even when she acts distraught, it really is an act to get more pats / attention / cat biscuits:
What do you mean recently moved cats can't take over their owner's side of the bed? I am pretty sure those are the rules and I am stressed and distraught, you know.
Mind you...there have been moments:
Moment 1
Sooky the wondercat has “took against” the airconditioner, which is slightly unfortunate as that is the only source of heat at the moment…and it is also quite cold at the moment.
[She has this weird thing against helium balloons on the ceiling, ceiling fans when they are on and now… airconditioners; as well as more understandable things like thunder and loud noises.]
Unfortunately, she is just going to have to toughen up and realise the sky isn’t falling in each time we use it, because my cold toes have more veto power than she does until it’s warmer.
She does seem to be softening up a bit…having discovered the wonderous spot in front of the air con unit where the floor gets really warm and she can bask bake to her heart’s content.
Moment 2
Night 3 of habitating in our new abode, she decided to add a personal touch in appreciaton of my interior design efforts and threw up…in the middle of my bed.
I am now slightly worried about her throwing up in and and/or all of my wardrobe boxes. That would be a tragedy the like of which has never been seen on this earth before…
Or what if she decided my bed hangings (aka clothing) were amazing hanging toys for her to play with? More than fur would fly that day…
What horrid scenarios – I can’t get rid of her and I can’t get a wardrobe just yet (thank you rewiring, I blew my wardrobe money on light fittings instead).
For both our sakes, the 4 legged housemate better leave the interior decorations to the 2 legged housemate, or there will be a rumble in the bronx.
So I have used the rails on my bed as my substitute wardrobe:
Bottom rail for coats, pants and shirts
It’s a “unique” approach to interior design but not only is it quite practical for now, it’s also blocking out the ambient street light late at night and the morning sunlight before I am ready to deign to notice it:
I even have my own stylist in my wardrobe, aka Her Majesty Madame Mim
For everything else, there’s mastercard boxes:
Life is a quick succession of cardboard boxes followed by more cardboard boxes
Well I have finally made it – in the moving sense anyway.
Last night I packed the remainder of my goodies and moved them and her super supreme majesty, Madame Mim (aka my feline owner), with the help of the Amazant M’sieur H.
So apart from the tidy ups at the other end, putting on phone and nerd access, shifting my computer et al and the clean ups.*..I am now calling housie “home”.
[*NB – that would be leaving aside the skirtings in the 3rd bed, bath and loo still to be painted, the touch ups and the general finishing off of the gargantuan task. But hey – I have earnt a couple of days off from DIY, I think]
I forgot to take my camera down last night to record the piles of boxes that is now my home, so will have to update you with pics of the work in progress over the weekend.
In the last hurrah’s before you move, when you are laying out your last moving outfit; if there are pants and boots involved, try to remember to include a belt and some socks you can wear before you box up the rest of your wardrobe and move it…
If you pack all your cat food into a box, ready to be moved, but put it aside until you are actually moving your own wondercat;…try not to get carried away with all the moving excitement and accidentally move the box to your new house.
It is unlikely you will discover that you did so until all the shops are closed and you have utterly run out of cat food.
On the plus side, that chicken breast you were planning to cook for your own dinner will make an acceptable substitute for your wondercat’s dinner, while you dine on muesli or dry toast. Yum.
So I am still not living in my house yet, but the list of things to do before-hand is reducing rapidly.
Admittedly, not being able to bend my body between my chest and my knees has put a crimp on things, but it looks like I will be in there, along with her super supreme Majesty, Madame Mim, on Tuesday night as all I have left to move is:
some minor boxes, probably about 3 loads worth.
canvasses
clothing
shoe collection
Given the fridge is not being delivered until Tuesday morning, this all works out perfectly.
Madame Mim (aka sooky the wonder cat, fatso the wondercat, fur pudding and fatso catso) has started to sense something is not quite right… I caught her telling her buddy, Dove, about her suspicions the other day:
I say, Dove, old chum…now that I am moving, there’s something I have been meaning to tell you about those two buddies of yours who each went missing a whiles back…
After you have made friends with the bottle-o, do the same with your local supermarket.
See if they can put aside the boxes they receive their stocks of egg cartons in. These boxes are incredibly sturdy and reinforced to carry delicate items. They are even better than banana boxes.
Bread boxes and banana boxes are useful for carting larger items around in, but there is a tendency to overload the boxes which makes carrying them difficult.
life at 1:1 scale 