I tried hard to fit in with the terracotta walls, gold woodwork in the bedroom, reddish brown in the hallway and the lounge. I honestly tried to come to terms with the white wall with the red polka dots, and the large black circle with the bamboo attached in the bedroom. The chinese style motifs got to me as did the large design in gold, black and red on the back of the bedroom door. On top of that I had to face a Noddy style red and yellow kitchen.
As the inhabitants of Douglas Adams' planet Krikkit remarked when they saw the Universe 'It will have to go'.
We though it would be cheaper to do it ourselves so I consulted with my cat, Sophie, and we decided that it was best to go for neutrality and contrast. We chose Ivory, a pleasant off white emulsion for the walls and replaced the red woodwork for a brown that looked as much like dark coffee as possible and to go with it Pearl Ivory, a soft cream color for the doors.
Like in the song, we did one wall at a time, shifting the furniture, removing shelves, filling holes and sanding, painting the woodwork and then the walls. The hard work was shifting my goods and chattels to different locations to allow room to work but the lounge ended up painted with the furniture in a better position. A shelf that was along one wall disappeared so that I could use the space.
I started on the bedroom and again I shifted goods and chattels. Sophie hid in the newly painted lounge looking bemused as each day I shifted my bedding and mattress into her room as I worked. The area above the picture rail was covered with bamboo matting stapled a la changing rooms and that, along with bamboo runners, small creatures and dirt, came down. The large black circle, the motifs, the decoration of the door had to be sanded down as did the gold painted woodwork, before I could start painting.
The bedroom took six days - very biblical - and on the seventh day I rested (went out for a drink) and I had another room sorted. Sophie cat began to look interested.
The next task was to paint the hallway for which I had run out of Ivory so I bought a can of a similar shade and used two coats of that, again painting the woodwork brown and the door to match the others which were reasonably good.
Now, I don't about you but as an artist I have a lot of framed paintingsthat needed a home. I bought the entire stock of S shaped picture hooks from my local hardware store and my paintings are now dangling from the picture rails. Very pretty.
Last but not least I attacked the kitchen. There was a hole in the wall big enough to put a fist in above a shelf - the kitchen is small and the previous tenant made an excellent job of replacing the cupboards with wide shelves that allow light in and storage space. However, thay are red above red tiles and the bright, Noddy style yellow was too much. We changed it for a softer yellow - Gold Rush - that looks better and reflects the outside daylight.
Sophie cat being black with green eyes looks pretty cool against the red tiles and manages a certain feline elegance posing in the windows and against the Ivory walls.
Of course I didn't go anywhere or do much as one week was spent working at summer school and in between the model T Ford (a Fiesta) insisted on breaking down.
Still, the advantage was that in between periods of hard work I did quite a lot of cat cuddling, and that, if nothing else is alays part of an ideal holiday.
