the Zen of decorating

When we had the double glazing fitted in August on or return from Vienna, the surveyor revealed that our rather shoddy windows were rather more jerry built than we had at first thought. All the windows upstairs on the front of the house had been boxed in around the window recess with bits of plank and skirting board and would need restructuring once the windows were put in.

I decided that in the spirit of not increasing the amount of dust harbouring curves and nooks and crannies that architrave presents, that we would keep it simple and do what they do "on the continent" and have the recess plastered and papered rather than boxed in.

This has meant that over that last few weeks that the offending bare walls have had to be sized, re-papered and painted (I'm not complaining by the way, I actually enjoy decorating). I painted the walls without much ado and then cast my eye over the rather grubby yellow ceiling. I decided that I would paint the ceiling the same colour as the walls on the landing. This was mainly fuelled by the spirit of purging and clearing out which has afflicted us both since our return, as there was still some paint left in a big tin in the cupboard at the top of the stairs.

I was unsure how far the paint would go as there was only what looked like a teensy amount left, but I set to. I was amazed that by the time I had scraped the bottom of the tin for the last vestiges of pigment that only this small patch was left unpainted (though with no notion of scale in the picture below, that patch could as easily be feet or inches wide*). I couldn'r decide whether it was irritating to run out of paint at this point or gratifying that the small amount had gone so far in the first place.

Still an excuse for another trip to John Lewis isn't a bad thing is it?

*it was actually about 1sq yard