Here we go again

I stopped blogging properly last year after the death of our beautiful cat Marwood. This may sound like a weird reason, but I was so heartbroken and the whole thing was dedicated to him and about him that I just couldn't re-visit it. I realise some folk may think I'm crazy, but it's the only reason I have. So, why am I starting again? Well, we bought a house and we're doing it up and I have to have somewhere to vent my frustrations.

Where to begin... Nine months ago we moved into the house which on first viewing looked as though it didn't need a thing doing to it, how wrong we were! Firstly, once all their furniture was out and before ours was in, it came to light that the two year old child who previously lived here had drawn some wonderful scribbles just at ankle height. They'd also decorated to sell and I think someone may have watched one too many episodes of Changing Rooms as the living room and kitchen both have "feature walls" in unsuitable colours. The one in the kitchen is monstrous, not least because the lady who started it decided she wasn't going to finish it, and cheerily told me over the phone that she had "left the paint pots for you to finish it". Secondly, they painted the living room on top of lining paper that wasn't properly stuck to the wall. And in the part where it didn't meet the wall, decided that painting the crack was a better idea than sticking it down.

So, because we aren't master decorators we decided to start the re-decoration in the spare room as it's small enough not to cost a fortune if someone else needs to be called in. After getting to the bottom of about 17 layers of paper (including woochip - cue sharp intakes of breath from everyone who has heard this), we dated the bottom layer (lime green box shaped flowers) to 1983 as they've written it on the wall. Not only that, we've found a nice hole in the wall....