Sugaring

I have spent the majority of today preparing the walls of the hallway so that I can start painting them.

So that involves me firstly going over the walls again with a scraper and wet sponge to remove the bits of paper which are clinging to the walls for dear life and then sugar soaping the walls down. Sugar soap is basically an alkaline substance that is used for cleaning, ie. it gets all the gunk like wall paper paste, grime, dust and dirt away from the walls so that you've got a nice clean surface to work with.

After doing that I then set about filling the craters and smaller dents in the wall with polyfilla, and I have to say I don't think I'd ever consider becoming a Plasterer for a second career choice :) It's well tricky trying to fill the holes and then get a semi level surface without using too much of the darn stuff.

All of the above takes me most of the day, and by the end of it I'm knackered and have probably lost half of my body weight in water due to copious sweating (ok, so I now realize that decorating in the summer is not the brightest of ideas!).

I then help Phil with his car, it appears that whilst he was changing the suspension on the car something has gone a bit tits up, and he thinks its to do with the anti-roll bar. It's making a clanging noise when he goes over bumps. So we take the wheel off to have a gander and what is going on, and it looks like a bolt has been cross threaded, which means that it isn't on as tight as it should be, which is causing the noise. There isn't much we can do as we dont have a hexagon key the right size, so it will have to wait until tomorrow when we have the right tools for the job.

We have roast chicken dinner for tea which is very nice and a good change since we haven't had it in a good while, and I also do a bit of internet research and find this rather cool bit of software which allows you to use pictures of the room you want to decorate and change the colours to what ever you want. It's called the My Room In Color tool and comes from Crown Paints, and is well handy.

Meanwhile I get a phone call from my Sister who tells me that she and my Mum have just been to visit my Nan - and its good news, she's much better than she was and is sitting up in bed and talking to people. It also seems that she is considerably less confused than she was, and now remembers most things.

It seems that the infection she had only intensifies the dementia, but with the infection on the way to being cleared up it has aided her mental clarity. The doctors in the hospital have also taken off the cocktail of medication that her GP had prescribed her, including the Warfarin which it now appears he'd been overdosing her on.

Posted by Abi on the June 27, 2005 9:49 PM