Out with the old

Our living room was always going to be a big decorating project for us. Every surface needed attention, changing from the before - patterned, papered walls which we hated, a faded painted ceiling and a hideous, ancient, patterned carpet on the floor - to the after, which is our own taste in plain coloured walls, a freshly painted ceiling, the mural across one wall and our own choice of floor, which is not carpet. Having finished work on our lovely new kitchen and with our energies recharged, we always knew that decorating the living room would follow.

Stripping the wallpaper from the walls revealed a host of patchwork repairs that needed covering up but logic dictates that we start at the top, the ceiling, so white paint is rolled on, splashing everything beneath with fine droplets, which we knew would happen and was why we started at the top. Skirting boards around the room are given a fresh coat of paint after peeling back the carpet, the folded over edges of which have been nailed firmly down to the floor, a strange way to fasten a carpet. This reveals some gaps through which cold draughts come whistling up from under the house when it is blowing hard outside, not what we need, so thick beads of sealant are applied to seal the gaps and make the room more airtight. This will likely need more attention when our floor covering goes down, the finishing touch.

Walls are next, the mural (which has already been revealed here) is followed by fresh but plain coloured wallpaper around the rest of the room. There are, as ever, some awkward bits - around the edges of the windows where odd shapes require tricky trimming - but generally the work progresses smoothly over several days. Whilst working on the job the focus tends to be on the next piece, or the next cut, and it is only when the last piece goes up that we suddenly stand back and admire what we have created. So long as one's eyes are blind to the still carpeted floor we have a room that reflects our tastes, simple and bold.

Christmas intervenes with our son Ben and his wife Naomi coming to stay but without their cat, Toby, who is not a good traveller.

Although left home alone we can keep watch on him via a live video link and he seems perfectly relaxed as he wanders about the house and garden.

After Christmas we collect our laminate flooring from the shop then have to carry the ten heavy boxes up the steps to our front door, a task that leaves us gasping for breath and trembly at the knees, so we sit down and do some planning. The strategy for laying the floor involves shuffling large items of furniture across from one side of the room to the other then back again as we lay the flooring in rows across the room. The (horrible) carpet must first be lifted to reveal what we have never seen, the wooden floor boards below, but this can be done in sections with the furniture then being lifted back onto each completed section of the new floor. A small crane might help with this but in its absence muscle power will have to do. Just like with the kitchen rebuild once we start the job we must cope with disruption to our normal pattern of day to day behaviour so the sooner we can finish the better. 

The end of the second day of laying the new laminate flooring sees a sizeable chunk finished. We now have a sequence of moves worked out for each line of planks running across the room from end to end so in theory the rest of the job should go smoothly. As each section of carpet is sliced from end to end, rolled up and taken away it reveals a horrible mix of underlay, some of which has perished into black crumbs and then in another area there's a thick woolly material that looks older than the house itself. The only element that is consistent across the room is that each piece of underlay is nailed to the floor with long carpet tacks or staples all of which must be prized free before work can begin. As one might expect, laying a new floor is pretty tough on the knees too. Nothing is ever simple.

On the positive side the history of the house hidden under the old carpet that is revealed to us is like being on an archeological dig.

Strange scribblings on the floor boards like these must have had some meaning to someone years ago, just as a cave painting would have done to a neolithic hunter. We can only guess at what the writer was trying to tell us. But finally the last plank is laid, the rolled up slices of the hated carpet are carried off to the tip and the history beneath our feet is once again hidden from view. All that remains is to fix an edging trim around the room to cover the expansion gap needed on all laminate floors but visually the job is done. Every last piece of that hated carpet has become landfill.

Looking over the transformation we have brought about it suddenly hits us. Unexpectedly we now have an almost perfect carbon copy of the living room we created in our Carradale home. Some things in life are just not worth changing.