And Finally
One of the things that attracted me to this house five years ago was the fact that it obviously hadn't been decorated since the 70's and there were no signs of damp or damage to the walls. The house had obviously had children in since there were chalk drawings all over the walls in the back garden and there were still marks where the stair guards had been fixed.

When on my own, I had help from my family and friends to decorate many of the rooms but the hall, stairs and landing was too much to ever get interested in.

About a year ago Barbara tried to motivate me into decorating the hall by tearing of a large lump of wallpaper, I hung a picture over that spot.

We're now in the process of selling this house to relocate to the other side of London so I can be closer to work. Having seen so many "House Doctor" shows we decided that neutral colours throughout the house will help to get a good price for it.

Barbara and I got up early on Saturday morning and had already started papering the upstairs hall by 8am. We called in help from my parents in the afternoon. The strange twisted shape of the staircase meant that I needed planks, supports and extra ladders to be able to reach to hang some of the lengths of paper which almost drop the full height of the house. With mum and dads help we had almost finished all the papering by 5pm.

Using the birthday money from my parents I hopped on my scooter and bought home a curry for the family. If you want to try a sweet curry try Kashmiri chicken. It's made with coconut and banana.

After a nice relaxing shower I was in bed by 9.

This morning was a slow starter, we woke up at 10am. Despite the late start we were able to finish all of the papering by lunch time.

In the afternoon we drove over to the Greenwich Peninsula to the hardware store to buy paint and flooring. We actually remembered to measure up the floor before leaving the house which is a novelty.

Though still tired and aching from working on Saturday we still tore up the hall carpet, cleaned the floor and put down the new laminate flooring. The system is "click together", like a giant jigsaw with all straight pieces. The only trouble with this jigsaw is you have to cut it to fit around the uneven walls and doorways yourself.

The floor is now finished to a fashion, I'm not quite sure how to finish around the edges, there are some quite large spaces in places, though, of course, not big enough to put an extra width of flooring into.

Of course there will be plenty more pictures once the hall is finished.