On Your Marks ....

These are trying times at FTC. The clock is counting down to the start of the mayhem and we have now run out of space to store 'things' which means the garden is being used as a temporary storage depot complete with upturned slipper bath which I'm frankly glad isn't in the house or I would be very temped to try it out for size, no doubt resulting in much "turtle on back" hilarity until Keith took pity on me and heaved me back out.

Anyway, first up is the new floor in the lounge. After 3 years, with a small sob of acceptance, the carpet was given up as a lost cause in the face of Harry's endless shedding. Instead I went online and found these delicious tiles which for some reason really reminded me of melted caramel and which I thought would look really lush with all the wood we have in the lounge already.

In order to lay these little beauties, we enlisted the help of a professional, as I had clearly run out of both time and talent on that front, and his instruction was to lift the lounge carpet well in advance to make sure the concrete slab underneath was level. Very sensible approach I think, one I should probably take in the future if I had any sense.

The one slight problem standing between us and a lifted carpet was of course the copious quantity of heavy furniture, none of which I am allowed to lift, so of course, we had to rope in some help. Bill and James who thought they were coming to ours for a weekend of relaxing at the local cider festival instead found themselves working off hangovers shifting bookcases and chests.

Luckily for us, the slab does seem to be in pretty good working order so the tiler is all set to start on Tuesday. In the meantime, I'm finding the new echo and student-esque lounge a bit disconcerting, especially as I don't have any slippers and concrete isn't so toasty on the tootsies. I have promised myself a sheepskin rug to go down in front of the fireplace once the floor is in place though, and be warned, come winter I will fight for occupancy rights with all my hormone fuelled might!!

The other piece of prep work that happened this week was the marking out of the feature wall in the nursery. The photos of the nursery being put together are being held captive on Keith's laptop at the moment, so you will have to wait to see the overall results, but this is a quick look at what will soon decorate the end wall.

I borrowed a projector from work and by making a tower of various pieces of furniture finally managed to get the image high enough on the wall to start drawing an outline in pencil.

Curious George was not my choice I might add; it seems that I led a sheltered and somewhat deprived childhood free of the adventures of the cute little monkey and his yellow hatted friend, but luckily my sister in law was well versed in the ways of the George and suggested him as the basis of the design.

Please excuse me dopey look in the photo. Having realised that the projector wouldn't enlarge the image to the size of the wall, I was busy trying to work out how I would extend various bits of it to fill the available space. The end result (of which I am extremely proud) basically involves a damn sight more fish.

Now I just need to get some tester pots and start blocking in the basic colours before the real artist comes along to make it look good!!