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Continuing with the other half of the coffee lounge, here you can view the window - looking out over patio greenhouse to the pond, bird feeder, and poly tunnel beyond. One of the next steps will be to polyfill and paint the bright pink brickery out of the tools alcove and place a curtain across so the tools are kept safe and dry - but unseen! I have already purchased a shower curtain to do this with. I may hang a flower such as a geranium in the hook near the window - I have one in the kitchen at the moment, as I don't have garlic hanging there for a few months.

Finally, back to where we began in my last blog - the former door between kitchen and coffee lounge, now open plan! Once again, the mirrored tools section will have a silvery shower curtain hiding it.

Liz and I turned out Betty's linen closet and I came home with a stock of light globes of varying type. 5 of the old style from a decade or two ago, and a lot of the energy saver bulbs that came out afterwards before fading to the new options 2-3 years ago. These will be useful and keep me going for a long time.

I did little this and thats in the coffee lounge, now more than half way done. Here is a shot of the doorway with the undercoat. Since this I have top coated the doorway and polyfilled the closet.

Here is the first attack of paint to said closet. I used the last of the blueish paint I have in my bedroom. I then undercoated the side panels and lower panel in magnolia.

I was painting most days again, due to horrible weather and feeling sulky. The topcoat was soon applied. This left me with just one area left to tackle - the yuckiest corner and grottiest wall - the tools alcove.

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On the second Saturday of April, I began to polyfill the closet surround. I do not want to use this wooden box style cupboard, so have decided to seal it up empty. It is too high and dirty and warped to be of use to me. You can see that I applied the first load of polyfilla above. More is to be applied until such time as the closet is fixed 'sealed' and paintable.

Still to go - the tools alcove - oh, and um, me... The pink brickery and dirt-stained ceiling will be painted once the back door and closet have been. Any gloss paint left over, will coat the exterior of the back door! Well - that is the plan...

One of my more recent fads is similar to that of my best friend. That is to collect specimens of flower and greenery from the gardens and use them indoors. For the time being, this is my arrangement - including white floral hedge, lungwort, primrose and grape hyacinth.

I like artsy decor - as those following the storyline of the coffee lounge will know only too well! I therefore have been 'playing' with my washing up detergents and making them into lava lamps by mixing various aromas and colors into squirter bottles. On the right, you can see me having added purple to the green, yellow, orange and red. The purple settled at the base.

It is time to take stock of where I am at in the redecorating of the coffee lounge. Please recall that when first built in 1953, this room was an outhouse - used for such as storing laundry baskets, coal, potatoes, and for tradesmen to leave deliveries if my parents were out - as it previously had a door into the kitchen that locked! As you can see in the above photo, that door has been removed by myself, as I prefer not to have too many doors between the sink where I do the laundry and washing line, where it hangs to dry! This walk way will remain for the purpose of getting out into the back yard, with or without laundry, and the heater will remain off. I have no place else to store the family gumboots.

Turning into the room, we see the freshly painted corner along with the linoleum I put down a few years ago. That corner will house the sofa when bought - though along which of the two possible walls I have as yet to decide. Maybe along the outer wall, so the window light is seen shining thru - or maybe under the window facing the decor wall. Either way, other than mopping, removing paint from the floor, and vaccing, the space is ready to furnish as far as this corner is concerned.

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Taking a short break from the coffee lounge, here is my bedroom vase. Still in situ are two stems of the carnations I was given as a thank you for my services and care given to Betty, added to these are daffodils from the garden.

Back to the coffee lounge...and this is the decor wall coming along fine. In the next shot you can see - well, other than me - the untouched tools alcove and brown cupboard, along with some completed Egyptian Cotton and Timeless white - walls/ceiling.

The window looks small - as it is - but is painted other than the over-hang. The next shot shows the finished wall and the one after the finished decor-wall.

We are now at the second weekend, mid-April. On the Saturday, I tried to fit in as much as I could - and that included turning out the pantry!

Above you can see the back door - awaiting undercoat and top coat in similar shade of white, prior to adding some color to the rest of the door. Also seeable is the 'mineral mist' blue I used in my bedroom, also adorning the 3 over door sections of the room.

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Here you can see that I also began to paint the back door. This is also going to be a decorative artsy display - not plain painting. I have 7 cans of gloss paint to use up and here we see the first can being used. Below, you can see how I spent the final Saturday of March - undercoating, waiting 5 hours, then top coating the coffee lounge ceiling. This is the undercoat almost done.

Here you can see the fake-glass panel - I am of two minds whether to paint over it or not - it might make the room darker, but prettier...

Alas, you can now see that this took me far longer than expected - one undercoat was nowhere near enough to cover BRIGHT pink brickery. It was going to take 2 undercoats and two topcoats...

I progressed - painting, painting, painting.... and almost finished the decor wall - but using the pale pink for the extra undercoats meant using the ceiling white paint on the decor wall instead, as I had more of that spare.

my final picture for today shows the walls after 2 undercoats....

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Liz suggested that I use the vacuum rather than a wet cloth after observations on my slow progress with cleaning down the walls. Here I am ready to vacuum the ceiling and walls and wipe down the mucky bits in the coffee lounge.

Before I could turn to painting however, I had a polyfilling job to be done. A lot of the brick wall that had been painted over was in tact - but in many places a little pre-paint attendance was needed. Cracks in the joints and surface cracks and holes where mortar had dropped were my three main tasks with the polyfilla tube.

I left the cleaning alcove and chunks of brick that were gone from its surrounds and a half tube polyfilla for another time. As March drew to a close, and the rains had wet the ground earlier in the day, I tossed on the CD of the musical Liz and I had gone to see recently and began...

...to fill in my 'blank canvas' of pink and white decor while sipping a peppermint tea. The wall above was to be filled with odds and ends of paint left over from the rest of the house decorating, of which I have now done everything except the bathroom and this coffee lounge.

I started by seeing how much of each color I had left - by shaking the tins and weighing them in my hands. I then began to apply the undercoat of beige, green stuff, and yellow which adorn my hallways and stairs, my sons bedroom, and the toilet.

I then proceeded to apply the mauvey-purple that covers the upper rim and ceiling of my spare room, before calling it a day and waiting for paint to dry. The idea being to recover each color and then fill in the rest of the wall with the paler pinky-mauve I used in the lower part of the spare room, paint the ceiling with left over kitchen ceiling paint, the rest of the walls with the full tin of paint Liz gave me that is the same color as her hallway, and gloss the door in a mosaic design with left over gloss paints. If there is any wall paint left, It will go in the cleaning alcove in stripes after that area is cleaned and polyfilled last of all.

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By 5.20pm, the poly tunnel was covered successfully. Around the outside, Liz had insisted we clear the ground further than I had thought necessary - leaving me some dirt/roots to turn into a pleasant hedge along the fence and a small growing area beside the poly tunnel.

We had 3 jobs left to do - some other day. One is to place 2-3 wooden batons across the poly at the rear to secure it; two is to refasten the latch; three to reverse the poly on one door post at the front.

A couple of days later, and we took a trip in the snow to the garden center for me to stock up on compost. Liz insisted it would be better for me to tip out what was in the tubs and pots already and start over.

I went back to the plot to see if there was enough snow to build 2-3 1-foot snowmen - but alas, the wind had taken most of the snow away. Hopefully it also killed off some of my weeds in my weed pile, though!

The poly tunnel now has the batons on the rear - well - 3 of them, although Liz thinks we should add a fourth. I was going to spend a half hour fixing the door latch in place - but the dry weather caught my mind and lead it elsewhere.

The side of the poly tunnel was now cleared and Liz had suggested I move the bush from sticking out near the door to the edge - which I agreed would be beneficial, and plans to make a sort of border along the fence began.

The above photo shows my start - I moved not only that bush, but a couple of clumps of bluebells, 3 pieces of fuchsia, a cut off shrub like thing, a bulb that may be garlic and may be a flower, a seedum, and 2 of the purple spotted leaf plants - then replaced the old palm tree trunk....

I have gotten as far as the broken plant pot.

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Here we see the iris flowers that fell off the bulbs when I brought some home from Liz's gardens recently - I plonked them into my kitchen soil tub of odds and ends 'in case' they decide to grow.

Well, here we are back on the subject of redecorating the coffee lounge - and here is the paint stash. Liz giving me a tub of paint to cover the walls that are not going to be done in the artsy mosaic mixed color design sort of persuaded me to 'get started'.

I removed the spiders and swept the floor. I tidied the stuff and got a good look at the available paint. The plan is to use up all the odds and ends in the tins that are left over from painting the rest of the house in a decorative mosaic mural on one wall, paint the ceiling with left over ceiling paint from the kitchen, and the rest of the walls with the tin Liz gave me.

First, I had one more corner to sweep up. I decided to dump the two smaller pieces of linoleum, just keeping the larger piece as the base for the coffee lounge - which will enable me to mop the 'pathway' from kitchen to back door with ease. This pathway gets very dirty with muddy gum boots and dripping washing.

All done - no spiders, tidy room, swept floor - it was time to do the grotty chore that would take a few hours if done properly - washing the ceiling, walls, and floor. I figured it being about 8.30am, and my being free til 5pm, and the weather being iffy - although sunny - I might as well begin at least. Perhaps if I cleaned the room before lunch, I could hop down the allotment, or walk round to the mailbox, or potter in the poly tunnel after lunch...

I began - wiping over a part of the ceiling and upper wall with a cloth soaked in water with a little washing up liquid added. I was not really that enthusiastic - but determined to get this boring part over and done with, so the more fun bits of actual painting could occur. I kept seeing the sun shining brightly through the window at me, though...

Here is as far as I got - as the phone rang. The option of walking a local beach with my best friend - along with the inevitable coffee we usually partook of on our trips - had saved my day from dirty cloths and the coffee lounge was once again 'postponed'.