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My friend left to go home for lunch and I Henry'd up the remainder of debris, the very worst of the spare room horrors and fears behind me. Ahead, more painting, more carpet removing from under the heater/pile of stuff, tipping the carpet debris and junk, and furniture shifting, new carpet laying, and futon or sofa bed purchasing - THEN the spare room will be fit for guests!

The above shot shows our mornings' work - the black sacks filled with carpet and white with scraped up underlay. Below, the remnants below the heater 'yet to be done' and my broken carpet/linoleum knife!

Since then, I have sanded, wiped, and re-Henry'd the gloss-work/trim and the spare room is now prepared for wall and trim painting. I apparently have another task on hand however - as you can see by the following picture. There is a piece of ivy growing through the window in the upper hallway - therefore a snipping of ivy down below is in order...

November continued...

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As you can see in the above picture, the ceiling has now been fully covered in the mystery color - a sort of 'gray-purple' pink. I have yet to open the giant tub, also given to me by my friend, to see how the colors will match - she described them both as horrible shades of pink that she did not want - but it will coat the lower walls, shortly and she seems to think they will go together.

I am contemplating removing the lampshade - it fits the hallways better than the spare room, as it is not burgundy, wine, pink, or purply coloring...

Please take a good look at this horrific 45YO carpet. Towards the end of the first week of November, my friend came around and we are now thankfully rid of the majority of this historic remnant. Whilst not ugly in itself, it is patterned, and I do not like multi-colored carpet - just plain ones.

I also know what went on top of it, however cleaned up the various messes were - cat fur, budgie poop, mouse blood, coal and soot, tea, coffee, soup, beer, wine, human vomit, pee, and poop have all splatted onto the carpet. (I did offer my friend gloves and face mask and apply both myself, though she refused the gloves - SHUDDERS!)

We spent almost 1.5 hours crawling about the floor armed with knives, scissors, scrapers, string, trash sacks, and a dustpan/brush - hacking, scraping, sweeping at that carpet and its underlay. My initial view of what lay underneath made me sigh with relief - NOT bumpy, lumpy, cracked and broken cement - but tiling, in fairly good condition too. PHEW!

After my friend went home for lunch, I got Henry to eat up our left behind carpet-crumbs. And here is what was underneath the carpet when we removed it and cleaned up a little.

Taking a very quick break from the spare room saga - the pantry had another re-ordering...

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Back to the spare room saga. Above you can see how less lumpy real polyfilla is when applied to the large tub polyfilla I bought to save money. It looks less artistic - but more professional. This is more the look I want in my own bedroom than the spare room, however... cos I can be artsy in here!!

I have now placed two family photos on the phone table. This is only temporary; they will be returned to the spare room once it has been redecorated. I have also purchased a 2016 week to a page diary, in preparation for the next busy year of my life. 2015 is already scribbled full of notes, crossing outs, etc as life, plans, and friends change course...

The photos are of me as a trainee nurse taken in 1987 or 1988 and of myself with my young son taken more than 2 decades ago. He is now 24... (Please excuse my mateus rose, I had to put it down in order to pick up the camera to take the photo.)

Now, back to the spare room saga - this is the way the room looked until November - ugly 45 year old patterned carpet still in situ, wallpaper stripped, green paint in various states of flakiness and polyfilla all over the place... I have, as you can see, managed to cover all remaining stuff with 2 sheet/curtains. Regular readers may recall how it took me two years to get rid of the room FULL of accumulated stuff.

My final picture for today shows you the activity I began on the first day of November. I began to use the 'pink' paint my friend had given me as she did not like the color. It was supposedly some shade of pink... but I think it will go nicely with the wine/burgundy colored curtains!

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Sorry for being so boring, but here is yet another cropping from the two apple trees. Yes, time to make yet more cider... I managed to bag up two large bags of stewed apple for pies and crumbles, but the rest went into two new batches of cider, after syphoning off batch 2 and 3. I now have 1.5 bottles sweet, 0.5 of dry, and 1.5 sweet batch two bottled up - ready to sip from December onward and the two loads below going at the brand new stage.

As you can see by the size of the apples I had over, it has been a 'too' good year for apples in our yard - sigh. I still have a few more on the tree if I can be bothered to cut them down...

My friend was talking about scooping up leaves to make leaf mould with - so I had some spare time and grabbed me a sackfull. The day before planning on scooping up another sack, it rained...so the second sack can wait!

My next shot shows the falling of fall leaves from my next door neighbor's verge tree. At least, were there anybody living next door it would be so - but the elderly lady has died and the house has been empty for a few weeks. I therefore did as my friend suggested and grabbed a second bag of leaves to make leaf mould with and only just in time - there is now activity next door and I assume we either have or will soon have new neighbors! I shall have to leave the next dropping of leaves....

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Just one last shot of the polyfilla that needs to be sanded down before the walls are washed and Henry vacuums up a burp-full meal of paint flakes, polyfilla fall offs and plaster. Then it will be onward to the next stage of the transformation - me and my friend are going to chop up and remove the carpet...

...or so I thought. Sanding did not go very well, as usual - but that's one thing I do not mind - I rather like the lumpy look, so intentionally do not over-sand. I then prepared to wash the walls.

The result after around 4 hours was that more green paint flaked off, more chunks of plaster fell out, and the room looked a total mess.

Protected from all things volatile, I re-entered to spend an hour or two on the ceiling and rim. The former was not so bad; the latter had wallpaper glue to scrub off and took a fair amount of time. Finally, after the heater was on overnight, I Henry'd up the plaster, polyfilla, and paint flakings leaving a dank damp room with yet MORE flaking paint. This resulted in me using Henry on the walls to vac up some of the flaky paint....and leaving it overnight. My friend came round the next morning and said 'not to worry' about the flaking paint (even more was flaking off as she touched it)... 

...hmmmm...

The plan was then to await a grocery delivery inclusive of 2 polyfilla tubes on Tuesday to polyfill the new plaster-holes. Then my friend would help me get rid of that hideous carpet by chopping it out in pieces and taking it to the tip.

In hindsight, not worrying about the flaking paint may have been an error of ours - but more about THAT in a future post.

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I recently accumulated enough nectar points to splash out on new bedding for free, and this is the result. Then it is back to the spare room horrors. Something in the room was making me feel faint and dizzy when I went in - even with a face mask. A friend of mine and I went thru all the possibilities - dampness, wall insulation, carpet...

... and she suggested cramming something in the wall holes and polyfilling them quickly, to be followed by chopping out the carpet ASAP. I crammed old shopping dockets into the gaps and applied polyfilla as directed, and indeed, although the result looks somewhat messy, the feeling of faintness and dizziness is no longer present.

It took a lot of polyfilla to fill all the cracks and holes in the spare room - 3 large tubs, one spray, and one tube later - and most of the cracks, gashes, holes, and plaster-fall-outs are dealt with. It is still very messy however, as I have not yet sanded it down.

My next task was to fill in the final cracks and holes and then sand down the lumpy polyfilla and wash the walls free of the flaky paint and this task has now been completed.

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Above you can see the left over apple pulp after I cut then blended the apples in my last post, early September, then poured them 2/3 apple to 1/3 water into a demi-john.

A quick shot of the back yard mid-September - showing the honeysuckle berries forming on the side hedge. Here are yet another load of apples taken from the tree... sigh....I was still cropping them in October, and here we are in the second week of November and still a few fall off the tree each day.

Next, here are a few fall pictures from the front yard, showing the berries and flowers still out. You can also see a couple more fruit on the passionfruit plant - which I am hoping will make it to ripeness before the frosts come. Some people say we will have a warm October/November again this year - and I am hoping so for November - October was, for I also have a few beans and strawberries 'almost ready' to crop at my allotment plot!

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On I went - miserable, sick, and wobbly. After one day of work, I had the bottom layer completed - and piles of stripped paper, dust, and flaked off paint on the floor to deal with. My friend had suggested I use the black trash sack she wrapped her machine in to fill with the paper peelings - indeed, it took THREE giant sized trash bags to take all the peelings in the end.

This shot shows the room after one bag has been filled with peelings. looking at THAT picture - the presence of a pretty pinky/burgundy spare room complete with recliner and sofa bed seems a far FAR distant dream - that however must be realized in the next few months as I have invited 2 overseas guests to visit me in 2016 and they will need housing!

On the second day of wallpaper strippage, I began on the upper level - which consisted of brown paper, gray paper and white bubbly paper layers over grey-white flaky paint. Once again - major problems arose - not with the stripping of paper, which thanks to my friend's loan of the machine went quite well considering, but due to underlying hazards...

such as finding out that when the double glazing had been installed, the workmen had done a crappy job and left gaps above the window. SCREAMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM!! This is gonna take more than one tube of polyfilla, folks!

Stay tuned - on the morning that I posted this pre-written blog, the ceiling had been undercoated and today the carpet came up...

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Oh dear me - whattamess! I was happy to use my friends 'magic machine' to get the crap off the walls quickly - but it still took me two days to completely strip the lower and upper walls of paper. I encountered several hazards en route - including a gash in the wall where my father's recliner smashed into the plaster on one occasion...

...a mysterious colorful crayon-like design...

...a couple of 'fixed' cracks that will definitely need more fixing before a paint.

markings on the wall that might just have been the wallpaper print or damp patches - but as yet are unknown factors...

...a few plaster droppings... and by now I was totally miserable and ready for a flurry of tears. Ever since the initial day of stripping the wallpaper, every time I entered the spare room I came over faint, dizzy, feverish, and nauseous after 5-10 minutes - even when wearing a face mask. Along with the depressing piles of stripped paper, cracked plaster, and flakey green paint, I was feeling pretty much fed up at this point. I had to keep going, though - as I had promised to return my friend's wallpaper machine on the Thursday.