Sunday 12 May 2013

Sam Sunday #15: DIY


As we've been in the new house for over a month now, we've started properly thinking about decorating and modernising the 'retro' interiors.  An ongoing project has been eliminating the mahogany woodwork by painting it white, to brighten up the hallways and door/window frames.  In terms of rooms, we've decided to tackle the master bedroom first.  At the moment, it has bright red carpet, faded yellowy-beige wallpaper and artex swirls all over the ceiling.  There were fitted wardrobes, but they were gold with yellow-tinted mirrors for sliding doors.  It's certainly not to my taste!  Yesterday we tore out the fitted wardrobes and today, we had a delivery of a brand new set of bedroom furniture that is eventually going to be put in once we've got a new carpet installed and had the walls and ceiling re-plastered.

One thing that we could put up is the bedside tables, as they are easy to move between rooms when the plasterer arrives and give us a bit more storage space in the meantime.  We rolled up our sleeves, unpacked the parts and got going. Believe it or not, it took almost two hours to put together one teeny, tiny bedside table.  It had nineteen component parts and over fifty screws/bolts etc!  Who would have guessed it from looking at the innocent bedside table above?  It does look nice now it's up (my currently reading books have a home that isn't the floor again) but it was an effort!  When it's time to put together the rest of the furniture, I think it'll be a call-Dad-for-help moment!


Aside from house stuff, I'm really looking forward to the Bout of Books read-a-thon, which starts tomorrow.  Lots of my favourite bloggers are taking part so I'm sure it's going to be a great week.  In fact, my reading has already increased in anticipation of the event, and I managed to finish both of the books I had been plodding through last week.  I'm halfway through Rules of Civility by Amor Towles at the moment; I hope to finish that soon and then read some shorter books so I feel like I'm making great progress.  To everyone taking part, I hope you all manage to meet your reading goals.  I think I'm going to go with daily progress posts throughout the week.

This week, I've been reading:
  

Review posted:

8 comments:

  1. Oh man, I love how just APPROACHING events can make you read more (I'm normally like that with the 24 hour readathon). It's like they've done their job before you even start!

    Nineteen components seems like TOO MANY for a bedside table!! I feel like my ikea chest of drawers took that long to put together, but they are massive and involve six drawers. BAD fiddly bedside table! (But yay getting all the things in your house together :) )

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    1. Lets hope I can keep my momentum going all week....
      And I dread to think what putting the wardrobes together is going to be like, I am 100% going to delegate that job! :P

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  2. With all that work going on in your house it is amazing that you are reading and signing up to reading challenges! I will be cheering you on, for your DIYs and your reading challenge! yay!

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  3. Let me know what you think of Rules of Civility - it wasn't all I had hoped sadly!

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  4. The bedside table looks awesome - sorry it was such a bother to put together. I gave in recently and just bought a small-ish bookcase as my bedside table. I'm a slave to the shelves!

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  5. Ugh Wuthering Height! So beautiful! ;)

    -Bee

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  6. Now where are those pompoms... :D But I'm glad the readathon already boosted your reading and it did the same for me - I'm halfway through Flight Behavior.

    As to the furniture DIYs, I'll better be quiet... Let's just say these are the times I am so grateful for the boyfriend :)

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  7. So excited to hear more about house updating and decorating! It's one of my favorite things.

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