In the decorating doldrums

That's a real log fire

Coffee table? It's a footrest.

We've spent a fair bit of time decorating our living room over the last couple of days (and even more time avoiding decorating it.) These photos show what it was like before we started decorating. Not too bad really, except for the fact that the wallpaper is brown (our least favourite colour) and the paintwork's in a pretty bad way. We decided to tackle this room first because a) we spend a fair amount of time there, b) it'll nice to have a pleasant living room for when we have visitors, and c) it's the only room for which we've got all the furniture we need, so it's the only room that stands a chance of actually looking good!

After sanding, washing down and other general preparation work yesterday, we started on the painting today. We didn't have a good time. The ceiling is 3.2 metres (about 12 foot) high, and has a raised grid pattern. The paint roller on a long pole just made a drippy, uneven mess, so Iain had to get up a ladder and use a brush. It took him absolutely ages and the finished result was almost as bad as it had been with the roller. We'd bought Dulux ceiling paint because we thought it would be like the Dulux ceiling paint in the UK - very good coverage, and nice and thick to reduce runs and splashes. We were wrong. It was thin and watery, it splattered everywhere, and hardly covered anything at all. We really were arcehtypal whingeing poms today, I can tell you. Iain was doing a very good impression of Victor Meldrew.

We went to the pub quiz to get away from the smell of paint fumes and cat poo and won a prize of a thirty dollar bar tab valid during next week's quiz. So if you're in Wanganui next Wednesday night, we'll buy you a drink!