Day Eighteen: Old Proverbs Stand True

At eight o’clock this morning (on a Saturday, let me remind you!) some family friends arrived to help us put up the ceiling in the bathroom after having kindly offered their assistance. I swiftly put all the insulation into the roof space, slapped on the plasterboard adhesive, as the two rather tall men held the ceiling into position, dad fixed it into place, and the first piece was up in a jiffy! The saying ‘many hands make light work' is certainly true when it comes to putting up plaster board ceilings, precisely six (or twelve) hands made it very light work indeed. The other two pieces followed suite, and within about 2hrs the ceiling was securely fixed (or so we hope) in place.

Now moving on to attempt #2 at the walls... as the men had well and truly taken over by this stage (competing with their ideas of how best to approach the task at hand)...I went to check on Alice as she slathered paint stripper all over the front door. Together we managed to take off all the brass fittings to give them a well deserved scrub; now the door is pretty much ready for a sand, and then a nice, fresh coat of paint! Yet to decide on colour but it will be either red or green I think.

Our assistants left a little before lunch, so dad and I finished the final two sheets of villaboard (the difficult ones with tap holes) and happily put the grinder and nails away for another day. All is complete except for a little piece above the window. After dad left, I recruited Alice to assist me with putting up a plasterboard wall in the bathroom. Then she successfully chipped off the last of the plaster off the brick wall in the kitchen, and gave it a coat of Boncrete to seal in the dust. Meanwhile, I donned an industrial face mask and set about sweeping up a whole garbage bags worth of dust and grunge that had covered the house following the grinding.

The final job for the day was to paint one half of the hall, I’m a little too ambitious sometimes and it wasn’t until we’d finished the can and were still about half a metre from finishing that I agreed to return home. This coming week, the house will hopefully become a little more ‘homely’ due to the installation of the toilet and bath, and...the kitchen!! Here’s hoping I’ll be able to cook a pre-christmas dinner. Overly ambitious once again? Perhaps not, we’ll have to wait and see!

Posted by Lucy