After I had dutifully written and posted my blog last weekend, Chris decided he hadn’t managed to get enough done afterall. Heading back upstairs after dinner he spent the evening creating sawdust as he cut and fitted the desk.

As we were only going to have one day free over the next weekend, and we needed to get the second bedroom ready for guests, I spent a fair few evenings working on getting the room in better shape.

I spent the first evening rearranging the remaining items in the room to free up space to put up the new bed.

The next stage was finishing off installing the coving. There were some horrible angles in this room, and despite it being the last room I had to do, the experience clearly didn’t pay off as I think I did the worst job out of the four.

Coving up, I filled the gaps with filler, sanded it back, and added caulke where needed. Finally, the ceiling got another coat of paint and the coving it’s first coat.

With the bed in place we managed the source a spare mattress from Chris’s family.

On a roll with the painting, I set to work painting the white wall in the kitchen. A less dramatic transformation than putting colour on the wall, but still nice to have more of a finished look.

With the spare room slowly coming together, we decided to concentrate on an area we’ve largely ignored up till now. The landing is an annoyingly complex space to plaster, with lots of little nooks and crannies to tackle.

While Chris worked on the ventilation system in the attic, I got on with prepping the walls for plastering. I always forget how long the prep work takes, though it doesn’t seem like it should eat up so much time. I cut off the excess insulation foam, taped the joins, and then coated the walls with PVA.

There was a small strip at the top of the wall on the stairs that still needed plasterboard adding. I wasn’t tall enough to fill the gaps, so Chris had to get up on the ladder to reach.

Our plan had always been to remove one of the wooden posts beside the stairs in order to widen them. Although we aren’t at the stage of replacing the stairs yet, we decided it was easier to remove the post now so as not to damage the plaster later on.

With the walls prepped we started plastering, with Chris getting the first coat on and me following to smooth it out. Even though it was a small space, all the different walls meant we only got the landing done, with the stairs having to wait for another day.

With a little remaining energy I planted some newly arrive winter aconite bulbs in the garden. These large yellow flowers will hopefully add a bit of spring colour next year. I think I’ve now filled the cleared bit of garden with as much as it can take. I just need to find time to clear another patch so I have somewhere new to plant up!