Err ……………….. actually, decorating!
It always used to be joint effort when Mrs H was alive and she was the best little helper any man could wish for,
always tidying up my mess afterwards or happily doing all those boring jobs that us blokes hate. She would clean paint brushes out, scrape of all the old wallpaper and do the boring paint jobs while I would crash on with the big stuff like the actual decorating or big paint areas and of course take all the credit for doing a great job when it was all finished. 
I decided to bite the bullet and make a few changes, so I am moving my ‘Man Den’ with all it’s computer and camera stuff into a bigger (ex bedroom) that opens up into my conservatory via a large patio door and gives me clear views of my fully enclosed and private back garden. I will transform the ex ‘Man Den’ back into a single guest bedroom and while I am at it I will also decorate the adjacent main bedroom (mine) that also opens out into the conservatory via another wide patio door also with the same garden view. I will also redecorate the hallway that links these three rooms, so that means the removal of 5 interior doors for painting and possible modification at the bottom to accommodate the new fitted carpets I will be having laid, thankfully not by myself.
So it is a case of stripping down to the painted plaster all 4 rooms, then repairing any damage, sanding down and making good all walls skirting boards and dado rails. I do not like plain walls and so will be wallpapering throughout in the same choice using a half pattern, the top part with a design and the lower part a complimentary plain pattern. All interior doors will be the same colour scheme (probably Taupe) and all door frames, rails and skirting boards will be in another. At this juncture I think I will do the ceilings in the same shade of white as the door frames ‘Jasmin White’ both colours seem to go quite well with my initial choice of wallpapers although I may go and look at some more choices tomorrow. I will leave the choice of carpet until I have decorated and see what goes best with the finished rooms.
I really miss my best mate in more ways than one and especially when it comes to all the preparation work, so I have spent a really hot day inside with a steam wallpaper stripper on full power all day and boy was it hard work, I can only wonder how on earth she would manage to have a room stripped of paper by the time I arrived home from work so I could start my decorating, another one of life’s little mysteries.
I would normally just score the paper and slap on lots of warm soapy water and then leave it to soak so it came off easier, but these modern papers are usually spongeable so harder to get off as the water does not penetrate the same. My daughter came to my rescue and said “Dad borrow this steamer of mine it will make the job easier” so I did and must confess that once you get your hand in it saves a lot of hard work, slightly slower in my opinion, but a lot easier. In any event I just have the radio on and keep steaming away, I have all the time in the world, but boy was it hot, like a Turkish bath at times.I will have to do a bit of swapping about as emptying a room and putting stuff elsewhere is no easy task, so the first job is to get the room for my den and the larger bedroom decorated so I can get the carpet fitters in and only then can I move my PC stuff into that room which will be huge job in itself, I will also have to add quite a few more electrical socket outlets in the new PC room so that’s another job to do. So if I am not about as much in the next few weeks you will know why, although I will always pop in each day for a look and a chat.
Forgot to mention that I also had to drain and remove a central heating radiator so that I can decorate behind it.
so by the end of today I am hoping that it will be finished apart from being carpeted, but I will leave that until I have another room finished then have it done in two fittings of two rooms at a time. 
