Weekend

I need to praise Mr K-E on my blog because he has been so good and hardworking. Today I met a friend for lunch and went shopping while he painted our living room; walls and ceiling. Yes, I was meant for a life of leisure :)

What I did this weekend:

Swear at the organisers of the Tour de France. All my buses were messed up because Trafalgar Square was blocked-off for the race start. I mean, it's not the Tour de England, is it? Hummpphh.

Went to the gym.

Cooked a roast chicken dinner. Mmmm.

Met N for dim sum lunch at New World. Had a wander down Charing Cross Road and up to Covent Garden. I bought another pair of shoes *hangs head in shame* this time from Russell and Bromley. Right, this is it. The retail ban is firmly back in place. No more buying shoes. Heard that? No more.

Mr K-E's Sunday

Mr K-E has been doing more colour experiments in our living room.

He has stuck little post-it notes on the wall so he doesn't forget which colour is which. Isn't he cute? :)

Some friends came to visit and they gave us some chocolates from Japan. Mr K-E is fascinated by Japanese packaging.







The box opened like a small presentation case. There was a little foil package inside, printed with a mole motif.








This is Mr K-E's favourite bit. Inside the box, there is the little mole in his burrow talking to an earthworm, who is wearing a hat. Bizarre, but you have to admire the attention to detail.

Speedy ! (16 miles per hour)

Today Mr K-E went to the "big" B&Q about 8 miles away. B&Q is a kind of DIY superstore and I hate the place. This must be how men feel about women's shoe shops. They just want to enjoy the end result and not have to go through the squealing/trying/decision-making process.

We have a few B&Q's which are closer but they are smaller and there is less choice available. So, Mr K-E braved the traffic in South London to drive to the giant B&Q.

8 miles in 30 minutes = an average speed of 16 miles an hour. (Mr K-E had good run, with no hold-ups.)

This illustrates why Londoners don't drive. It's just not worth the hassle.

The average traffic speed in London is 10 miles an hour, but to tell the truth I can't believe it is even as fast as that. They are probably including the stats from the middle of night and taking a 24-hour average.

On another note, Mr K-E went a bit crazy in the paint section, without my restraining influence. He bought 11 testers - why? why? why?


That makes a total of 17 testers (so far) that he has bought for our flat which we are selling anyway!

Oh, and we got our shopping delivered today too.

Neutrals are good.

We are trying to neutralise our flat before we put in on the market. That's what all the TV shows say you should do; remove all trace of your personality so that potential buyers can see themselves in the space. All makes sense, I guess.

So bye bye sky-blue "playroom", sunny yellow hallway and the dark red (dragon's blood red!) column in the living room. Hello neutral walls everywhere.

To be fair, the bright colours look a bit dated now. Rich praline 4 is the new magnolia, don't ya know.

Here's Mr K-E messing around on the stairs. *sigh* I'll miss that sunny yellow hallway.

Dulux Dilemmas

I think it must be my down-to-earth Bruneian upbringing, but I just can't get excited about different coloured wall emulsions. Just paint it all apple-white for goodness sake! Or magnolia, if you want to be a bit different.

Unfortunately, Mr K-E has other ideas and has been doing colour experiments in our living room.



From left to right,

• Rum Caramel 5
• Cocoa Blush 5
• Natural Taupe 2
• Rich Praline 4
• Velvet Truffle 5

(The name is actual colour and the number is the "shade", if that's the right word, i.e. lighter or darker.)

What gets me are the silly names - obviously Dulux must have done consumer reasearch and found that their target customers respond well to food references. Our guest bedroom is done in Maraschino Mocha - doesn't that sound like an upmarket ice cream flavour?

Sunday

Painting all day. Cooked lasagne for dinner. Exhausted.

DIY Saturday

We ordered a new carpet for the hallway today. £550(!!) for a new carpet in the stair and landing only. The carpet (and underlay) itself was only about £160 but the fitting costs £220. Plus there are other bits and pieces like grippers and whole load of things I had never heard of.

I'm not surprised at the cost of the fitting - it is why everyone in the UK is obsessed with DIY. You have to sell your kidneys before you can afford to have any work done in your house. So the only alternative is to do it yourself. Carpet fitting is beyond us... but no way am I paying someone £200 a day to do the "general" stuff. Fuck, how hard can it be??

Mr K-E and I spent the whole day DIY-ing. Things I never knew before moving to London:

• The stuff on used on walls is "emulsion" and not "paint". It is also normally water-based. Although I always say "painting" for everything.

• "Paint" goes on wood or metal and is normally oil-based and looks glossy. If you emulsion your doors and skirting boards, they will look rubbish. (The previous owners of our flat did this - and it looks cheap and shit)

• Before you repaint wood (especially if it has been neglected), you need to de-grease it with sugar-soap solution and rub it down with sand paper or else the new paint will not "take". This means it will come off after a few months.

• There are different grades of sandpaper.

• Never try to start painting if you don't have masking tape in the house. Or else you will get paint all over the light switches/door jambs/window sills etc. Nightmare.

• Painting with rollers is not as fun as it looks on TV. It gets pretty boring after 5 minutes and then it starts to feel like hard work.

• Polyfilla is your new best friend. Cracks? What cracks?

• And last but not least...I hate DIY. When oh when am I going to win the lottery?
  

Sunday

I thought it would be good idea to have a luxurious breakfast today. So we had scrambled eggs on brown toast with smoked salmon. Yummy.


It was a cold sunny morning. (You can see the eggs steaming.)






We spent the rest of the day doing DIY. We've decided to start out DIY efforts in Bedroom 2, which means everything from Bedroom 2 is now stacked up in our bedroom. There is no room to move and I have move the piles of assorted junk from our bed before we can sleep tonight. It's 11:30...help....