With a hectic Christmas over, I think both of us just wanted to collapse on a sofa and not get up until it was time to get back to work. But with very few weekends left till the baby arrives, it seemed wise to push through and get on with some DIY.

The floor in the spare bedroom, which will be ours once the baby arrives, had been sanded but never treated. In order to get on with the job, we had to clear the room, including taking apart the bed.

Room clear, Chris gave the floor a sand to refresh it before cleaning and treating. In the other rooms we’ve used a basic clear varnish, but we had some of the treatment left from the cork floor so decided to use that instead. Annoyingly it looks much nicer than the basic varnish, so we wish we’d used this on the other rooms now. It took two coats with four hours drying between to get the floor ship-shape.

While Chris focused on the floor I continued with windowsills. First they needed attaching, now I had a new countersink (naturally we found the old countersink not long after). I screwed the windowsills down into the wood below, helping to hold them in place and flatten out wavy corners.

Screwholes and any gaps then needed to be filled and sanded. We decided the two spruce windowsills could do with darkening to match the rest. We had some of the oak stain left from the wooden beams so I gave them two coats of that, which did the job.

All windowsills attached, fill and sanded, the final job was two coats of the same treatment we were using for the wooden floor. Overall I’m really pleased with the end result. Fitting windowsills for our large window recesses.

One of the reasons I wanted to get the windowsills in was because it’s the last job needed in many of our rooms before they can have their final coat of paint.

With the varnish dried, I caulked around the edges, and filled the exposed board beneath the large windowsill in the spare bedroom. At the same time Chris filled some rough patches on the walls. Everything sanded, I started on the final coat of paint.

I made my way round the room applying the second coat to the walls, and another coat to the skirting and arcitrave. Stretching up and kneeling down is quite tiring work when 31 weeks pregnant, but finally the bedroom is done.

Now we can start to move our things in, and hang up pictures. With the windowsills finished in the study and other bedroom too, these can now also have final coats of paint. It’s getting tight to the deadline, but it’s feeling a little more achievable with one room ticked off.