Working weekends

6.30am. Alarm goes off. This would be fine on a week day. But it’s the weekend!

Jon was eager to make an early start on the house to maximise our working time. He knew I wasn’t exactly thrilled, so was being especially smiley and made me a cup of tea, but it still took a good few hours to work through the grump.

My job today was wallpaper stripping. I have never stripped wallpaper before in my life, so Jon gave me a quick lesson on how to use the steamer. He made it look easy, but as soon as I gave it a go, it became clear it really wasn’t and I felt like a complete amateur under Jon’s critical eye. The first wall took ages, and whenever Jon came in he would provide ‘helpful’ tips, which made we want to throw the steamer water over him. After a few hours though, I actually started to get the hang of it and found my own method and technique that seemed to work. It is a great workout for your arms, so I’m hoping mine will be lithe and toned after a few more days of this!

Jon bought me some gloves so I can work EVEN harder!

By 11am I was seriously flagging, so I sneaked out to get hot drinks and croissants from the local bakery, Loaf. I’ve mentioned it before, but it really is amazing! The jewel of St George, with the bread and pastries all baked on the premises. The downside is it gets very busy and you end up bumping into people. Bumping into people should be a good thing, but not if you’re supposed to be working to a tight schedule, and on my return to the house Jon commented on the length of my ‘break’. I was getting him coffee!

At 2pm, I had finished the main upstairs bedroom. One room down, many more to go. While I had been making what felt like minimal difference to the appearance of the house, Jon had been changing everything, and creating shitloads more rubble for us to tidy up in the process. He had knocked through the fireplace downstairs (revealing some bricks in the hearth which could definitely be smartened up), removed all the lath and plaster from the walls upstairs we are going to be changing and knocked the doorway through to the lounge (he was a bit affronted when I came downstairs and walked through it without even noticing!).

The first floor now looks like a shell of a house, with just the stud walls dividing up the rooms. We had been recommended Homebase rubble sacks and after trying them and another brand, I can officially confirm the Homebase ones come up trumps.

I took the first tip run. So thankful we have found one only 5 minutes away with long opening hours (I know the opening times of all the waste centres in the area now!). Pulling up with 15 bags of rubble in my tiny car and being a female is apparently a little unusual: ‘Are you building a swimming pool’ was the response from the attendant. ‘I wish’! Jon went a few more times after me and got completely ignored.

My friend Beckie popped in for a nosey. It was fun showing her around the hole and she made lots of complimentary remarks about the ‘great potential’, but I swear I saw a look of fear on her face when she saw exactly how much needs to be done and had to step on actual soil to cross through the kitchen.

We had a bit more of a lie in on the Sunday – 7.30am! And fitted in a hearty fry-up before we left, which put me in a better mood. Another day of gutting/stripping/tidying. Jon got talking to our neighbours 2 doors down (who it later transpires that I know, as the husband had been a hand magician on one of my shoots), who have also had an attic conversion done and they kindly said we could take a look at theirs at some point (I said we were far too filthy to enter a civilised dwelling right then).

We left late afternoon and waited until a respectable 8pm to start our third bonfire of the week. It’s actually really nice, just chilling out together and watching the fire – almost romantic except for the occasional whiff of potent wallpaper glue smoke. I take my role as designated fire-woman very seriously and am on permanent standby with the hose to stop the sparks spreading.

Went to bed super tired, but actually quite satisfied with how much we had achieved.

Left the radiators and sink out for one night and they were gone the next morning! One less tip run...