We’re a little late on getting the nursery set up. This is partly because the baby will sleep in our room for the first few months anyway, but also because we struggled to find a local carpet-fitter who will fit grass carpets. While in theory we could fit the carpet ourselves, we’re both a little too worried about cutting it too short. There are lots of mistakes you can cover up, but a carpet 1 cm shorter than needed isn’t one of them.

Finally having booked in the fitter, we realised the woodwork needed another coat of paint pre-carpet fitting. With my family visiting for the day I roped my sister and my mum into a couple of hours of very dull painting, recoating the skirting and arcitrave, as well as varnishing the newl post.

Downstairs, dad helped Chris fill in around the new fireplace with bricks, and added the first coat of plaster.

With the paint dry, and the room emptied out, the fitters came and did their job, installing a seagrass carpet in the nursery and a sisal carpet in the landing. Both were offcuts we ordered direct from suppliers, cutting down the cost.

Carpet in, Chris reinstalled the desk drawers and set up the crib. Final piece of furniture will be a chest of drawers, somewhere for our piles of donated baby clothes to live.

With the carpet in, Chris set to work installing oak entrance strips for each of the five doorways leading onto the landing. This unfortunately also meant taking off the doors and trimming them down. For the shower room (currently a tool store) door, this also meant adding a door stop to the frame, something we hadn’t gotten round to. And for the spare bedroom it even means adding a whole new door frame, something that might have to wait a while.

The nursery door was fairly straightforward by comparison, just needing trimming down. Having taken it out for a trim, Chris left it outside for me to sand and get primer on. I’d thought the sanding would be a quick job, but between removing glue patches and hand sanding around the awkwardly spaced nails, it took quite a while. Once the primer is dry it’ll just need a coat of white before it can be rehung.

Post-door painting, I ticked off a few smaller jobs, including painting the piece of wood Chris has added to fill the gap beside the kitchen cabinet.

I also sanded under the radiator in the bedroom, getting rid of the final coats of varnish (it does look much better, though it’s hard to spot the difference in the photos).

My big job was a second coat on the blue in the kitchen. I’d been holding off till Chris had decided what he wanted to do with the stable door (possibly thinking it needed the frame building out) but I’ve grown tired of waiting, and the blue paint blends in well so I can just repaint the doorway when the time comes.

Though a simple enough job, there was a little filling and sanding to do first, a lot of moving things out of the way, and rather more clambering than you might normally expect someone at 8.5 months pregnant to do. Still the room looks better for it, and just leaves the lounge as the last major room needing a second coat.

While busy sanding the door outside, a local walker stopped to say how much they liked our yellow front door and how much more loved the house looks. With much of the outside still looking like an overgrown scrapyard it’s nice to have a little encouragement.