What started with a new settee (I reported) ended up with overhauling the entire flat. It all sounds rather easy. Paint all rooms, have new flooring everywhere. Order new furniture. Done. But let me tell you: it is a nightmare, worse than moving.

In fact it is a complete move. To get the floors in, one has to empty out the room, obviously. Entirely empty. In fact, it was two rooms at the same time. Two rooms are about one day of work for the man who lays the floorboards in. Which means, all furniture and their contents have to go elsewhere. Elsewhere meaning the the other two rooms. And of course, I won’t have everything out without painting the walls. And if I have all furniture empty, they get a thorough scrub and cleaning, too. All of it. And next I refuse to put dusty, grimy stuff back in, so all content gets the sanitising treatment, too. Let me just say, wiping down a couple of hundred book jackets is not an easy task. And next come the other two rooms. Everything starts over. Once all stuff is back at its place, cleaning starts again, as the constant use of a saw (floorboards, remember) produces much fine dust.

To make things worse, the skirting boards weren’t delivered in time, so we had to move out, move in, out and in again.

Clearly, starting with a new settee wasn’t the greatest idea of all. We should have done the floors and walls first, then put new furniture in. However, we are almost done, just waiting for our new bedroom furniture (here we got the order right, first renovation, then new stuff). Until then, we use our old bed, the cupboard has already been taken down and awaits the bulk collection next week, along with other stuff, we threw out.  I will use this opportunity, to empty out our cellar. Another mega project I squeezed in, while we are at it. But I know, this is the one and only time, to get my sweetheart to throw out something at all. And myself, too. To be honest, what of my  own belongings had been stored in the cellar, when I moved in here some four years ago, has not been used or looked at since (except my tools). So I don’t really need any of it, do I?

What I intend to really say here: I am exhausted. Working my regular job every day, additionally giving up one of my two days off a week, to help out at the restaurant kitchen at work, to come home to evenings and mornings full of moving stuff, painting walls, and cleaning, takes it’s toll.

But as of today, with my desk back at its place and the laptop up and running, looking at a freshly painted wall (for the office I went for one wall in lemontree-yellow, one in bamboo – which turned out a kind of camouflage tone of green, but still is nice, the rest is in white), I see the light at the end of the tunnel. To use a phrase, I usually detest. It all will end soon. On top, our new floor looks just fab. I promise to be back with some pics in a short while.