Quit while your're ahead......

Doesn't time fly when you're enjoying yourself. I just looked up at the clock to see the time and it's gone 6pm! I thought it was about 3-ish, but such has been my level of concentration and engrossment (is that a word?) the time has just rushed by.

I'm really quite chuffed with my achievements today, although inevitably there were lots of unforeseen difficulties along the way, which I overcame with a combination of rank stupidity, derring-do and absolutely no forethought at all.

However, much progress has been made, as I shall demonstrate. Bear in mind that nothing is fixed permanently in situ yet, as I still have to shorten electric wires etc and finalise tape runs.







Not bad eh? The floor has come up beautifully, thanks to a mixture of burnt sienna and dark brown acrylic paint, mixed together and thinned down with water, then brushed on, left to dry for a few minutes, then wiped off with a dry cloth. It's taken the sheen off too, so that the floor just looks waxed rather than varnished.

I'm also really pleased with the cabinets set into the false wall. I managed to find a sample paint pot in a really lovely period colour, which matched the blue in the wallpaper perfectly. I've set light bulbs into each of the top sections of both cabinets which should give a cosy glow.

The fireplace wiring, as predicted, did give me a major problem, as I have to run the wires from two wall lights, a flickering fire unit and another light bulb, along the floor on the left hand side, to behind the left cabinet. You can see the bundle of wires in the photograph.
I had calculated the measurements of the false wall and inset cabinets to the last nano-millimetre, so if I ran the wires by the side of the left hand cabinet, the whole back wall assembly wouldn't fit. So I had to drill a hole at the bottom left hand corner of the cabinet, just big enough to let the wires run through, while allowing the cabinet to fit flush against the wall.

Not easy, and I'm not 100% satisfied with the result but I'll tidy it up tomorrow. The wall paper is all fixed in place, but I haven't yet been able to check any of the lighting to see if it works. I learnt the hard way years ago, that being impatient to check lighting runs just after wallpapering was a Bad Idea. The wallpaper paste conducted the electricity across the copper tapes and caused a catastrophic short circuit which blew all the light bulbs and frightened the life out of me. So nowadays I always leave 24 hours to let everything dry thoroughly before doing a lighting test.

That aside though, I'm quite pleased with my day's work. There's still an awful lot to do - curtains, soft furnishings, view through the window, trompe l'oeil panel behind the door, fire hearth to make.....the list goes on and on. And that's before I even think about furnishing it and adding all the little finishing touches.

But for now my work here is done, and a large glass of something chilled is calling me from the kitchen.

Cheers.........