Poor Jamie - after three weeks painting walls, he's now Colonel Sanders.

Two days so far and we're still not done. I say we - Jim sanded and I went surfing for three hours. Neither of us could move by the end of the weekend.

It took waaaay longer than we thought, and we're still not done!

We started here - that awful orange varnish!

And now we are kinda here. It's taken a LOT. @ericvancewalton , I am very jealous of your lovely hard wood floors. Whilst the pine should look good when it's done, and we're happy to live with it, dammit, I would have liked fresh new hardwood.

We tell each other it's sustainable, tells a history, is characterful - all whilst secretly wishing we were rich, and could afford a big house and all the trimmings. You know, a view, two bathrooms, some tradespeople to do the work for us. Sigh.

See all that grey in the photo above? That's where the laundry used to be, and that's water damage. I set to it with oxalic acid. The instructions are to neutralise it with something like bicarb soda, which I duly did. Then - disaster. Everything went green. Have you ever seen the Father Ted episode where Father Ted tries to repair a car with a hammer? The more he hammers, the more dents appear, which means he has to hammer more. The more I tried to 'neutralise' the green, the more the water bled into the floorboards until I had a fucking disaster in front of me. Panic stations!

Honestly, if you haven't seen it, watch the clip.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z4fBbhyzE9A

Here's a photo - unfortunately I didn't take a picture of the extent of the disaster as I was too stressed out, but even this gives you an idea of what we DIDN'T want the floor to look like!

Never fear though, Jamie to the rescue. More oxalic acid and the green disappeared. The floor still isn't perfect. Jamie was threatening to rip up the floorboards in this section and get new ones, but that' smore money and remember we were embracing characterful? Plus, more work - honestly, I'm so tired and fed up!

Then there's also the abyss - a big line in the floor where the wall was and the pine boards don't quite meet each other. Jamie cut it with a saw and we will have a characterful pine insert running the other way.

More to come.

With Love,

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