REDECORATING THE HALL

‘We’ have been redecorating our hall.   It was last done about 1990 so I CAN’T complain that it hasn’t pulled its weight.

We had some redecorating done in the interim (we had a leak from a faulty shower under an insurance claim) where the work had to be carried out by tradesmen.   John, who was taught how to paper by his father, watched in an agony of disapproval.

One paperer, who was annoyed that John had already purchased the wallpaper from John Lewis instead of through him where presumably he would get a percentage of the cost as a finder’s fee, announced that we were two rolls short.   He would finish the paper he had got and then he would go home and he could not come back for a week.   John got in his car and drove to John Lewis at Croydon and bought two rolls of wallpaper and delivered to our disobliging craftsman and later found the missing two rolls behind a sofa where our reluctant employee had planned to hide them.   He spent the rest of his time relating how very unsuitable this paper was;  that it would split down the seams and very shortly be a mess.   (No such misfortune has occurred.)   John then thanked this man’s labourer and tipped him generously while pointedly not doing so for the decorator himself.

So there was no question of hiring someone to do the job.

We have never had any difficulty in making choices for the house and we chose a white paper with pencil drawings of flowers on it.   John did the difficult stair drop first of all.   Balanced on a plank suspended between two ladders it looked dangerous and unstable but he managed it.

I  think the hall is the worst room to redecorate.   This one has eight doors and a stair with a half landing on it.

I am not entirely satisfied with the curtains which are beige and black, and I think when I have finished my current burst of black thread altering my clothes I will put the dining room curtains in that bedroom.    I will use the lining from the existing hall curtains to llne them.   I will put a white curtain which is in one of the bedrooms into the upstairs hall window, and put the Egyptian curtain in the small  bedroom.

This leaves the double window in the dining room curtainless but I have been wanting to put a thicker warmer curtain with a thistle so that is quite convenient.

It is good to have that done before the winter.

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