Painting and Decluttering

I would have thought that my next post after the last one would have been more about Infinity – my miniatures have arrived and I’ve actually played a game of it using the quick-start rules last weekend.

Instead, though, it’s more about painting in general. House painting.

See, after Vickie’s first round of eye surgery, she decided we were finally going to do something about some household priorities that We – okay I – have been putting off for a good while.

In the last round of major renovations (that saw my stepson Karl installing two new walls in our house and us giving the living room an almost complete makeover), there were still a couple of items that got left un-done; the doors to our toilet and bathroom. They’d been caught in the spray from doing the walls, but they’d never actually been painted themselves, with the result that there was this dull beige patch in the middle of both of them.

They’d been one of those things that I occasionally noticed and thought “Hmm, I must do something about those sometime” and promptly put out of mind.

But not only was Vickie sick of seeing the un-painted doors, she’d also got – bored? Frustrated? – with the acid green colour that we’d painted the feature wall in the living room with, and wanted to replace it with something adobe instead.

So we hit Bunnings, selected colours and stocked up on brushes, rollers and masking tape. And over the last pair of weekends, we re-did the back wall and both doors.

The result is great. The new colour looks a lot more restful than the green we had and goes in better with the rest of the living room.

But I’ve found a real sense of satisfaction in doing it and finishing it, even though I had to be dragged kicking and screaming into it. In previous jobs, I’ve left visible roller marks, but after two-and-a-bit coats on this wall, there are none.

I wonder if I ought to add a new mood: “Capable.”

I’m actually keen to fix up some of the other areas that need work, like our hallway, where the paint is flaking off the walls (not enough prep last time) and the doors to the laundry and our bedrooms (installed without paint).

Not only that, but in the renovation work, we took the time to sort out our entertainment unit with the aim of cutting down on the volume of wires behind it.

While we’ve found better ways of running the various cables, one of the best things we did to ease the mess was get rid of some of our appliances – specifically, the DVD player, the 5.1 speaker set and the digital sound decoder.

The Xbox 360 has remained for the moment, but mostly as a DVD player; I barely play any games on it any more (which puts my likelihood of getting the recently-announced Xbox One at around nil). And while we’ve missed the speakers during the last few episodes of The Voice, we’ve been enjoying having a much better presented, nicer living room as a result of the absence of the speakers.

It’s actually got me looking around at other stuff and wondering, hot “what can we do without?” but, “what are we doing without already but just haven’t taken the final step of removing from our place yet?”

Are you producing, satisfied?

When did you last make a significant change to your living space? What did you do?

What skill improvement left you feeling more capable and confident than before?

Please comment!