Busy, busy, busy...

Oh my god, I have had months of nothingness to do and now all of a sudden there’s this mad panic to get everything done! Sana’s wedding over and done with, Ashar’s wedding over and done with (had a lovely time and will put picture’s up on flickr soon). Summer hols were so good, I’ve loved spending time with just my mum and my sister, just us girls together! It has been AWESOME!

Dad and Billy arrived back in the UK at Heathrow on the 6th September. The last few days before that I had a mad panic trying to get the hallway decoration finished. It started with me being extremely bored one night, had run outta DVD’s to watch and seen as mum kept asking me to redo the hallway, I thought why the hell not? Eh?! Turns out there were a lot of bloody good reasons not to! There I was at 2am with my trusty wallpaper steamer by my side, stripping wallpaper which was quite therapeutic, but the cleaning up - not so much fun. The wet glue eventually dried, which is great as it doesn’t stick to your hands but not so good when it dries fast sticking to the flippin laminate flooring. Damn! The stripping of the paper only took an hour or so, it was the cleaning up that annoyed the hell outta me (Grr!) It’s nice that I can now look back and laugh about it now. Oh the hilarity!

I think my mum was slightly shocked the next morning. I managed to get a cold (apparently according to Tyagee (my dad’s cousin brother) it’s a combination of the steamer and the wet glue which creates humid conditions that lead to me acquiring this cold. I’m not sure if he’s being serious or just having me on!

Anyway the last week or so has been me (on my own may I add!);

• Stripping wallpaper (Great fun)
• Cleaning up remains of paper (Not so much fun…)
• Sanding down walls (Got covered in plaster dust from head to toe)
• Painting all the wood work (Skirting boards not too bad but we have 9, yes 9 doors leading off from the hallway – the no. of times I had to go up and down the frigging ladder!)
• Putting new wallpaper on the ceiling (Bloody nightmare doing it on your own, hair covered in paste. Not a happy bunny!)
• Putting wallpaper on the walls (Much simpler, thank god it wasn’t patterned and it was just plain lining paper)
• Painting the whole hallway, ceiling and walls white (mostly cos mum couldn’t decided on a colour… she just had to do one thing… pick a colour…argh! I love my mum really)
• Repainting just the walls in the hallway in the colour “wheat”, which is basically cream or magnolia I guess. (I’m pretty sure mum said she hated magnolia but I didn’t want to point this out at B&Q seen as it took her forever just decided on that one colour)
• Repainted the inside of the cloakroom in white as well and put shelves up inside it (so we have more space to store, well a lot of stuff we probably don’t really need. Ah well I do as I’m told…lol)

Wondering how I did all this on my own?! Well my dad taught me well… that and a lot of tantrums when things didn’t go my way. But I think it worked out well in the end, lol! My biggest challenge I think was the bloody coving, I managed to cut my hand a few times with craft knife trying to get the correct corners. Again last summer, we put coving in the living room and that was basically just a rectangular room and still we had difficulty with it. Yet my mum still did not learn and I think the conversation went something like this;

Mum: "Wow doesn’t that coving look really good Saima?”
Me: “uh huh” (not paying attention at all)
Mum: “It really brings the room together, doesn’t it?”
Me: “Hmm” (still not listening properly)
Mum: “How much do you think we’ll need for the hallway?”
Me: (Slowly realising where this is going) “Not sure mum, why don’t we go home and check the measurements of the hallway (and vowing never to bring her back to the DIY store)
Mum: “Oh don’t worry I’ve done that bit, I’ll just ask that man over there to help us…”

And off she went. 15 mins later I’m putting strips of coving into the boot not having a clue how to do this without my daddy to help me! Normally if the room was a simple shape I wouldn’t mind having a go but my hallway was another matter. Many awkward corners… I’m assuming it was built that way just to annoy the hell out of me. I finally managed to get the job done with a lot of crying … and a lot of help from Uncle Mirza (Ashar’s bhai’s dad!). The hallway complete, I even took mum shopping so she could dress up the hallway with fancy light fittings, new rugs, flowers, wall hangings etc. How nice am I, eh? Actually I just lost the willpower to argue and followed mum out the door; just SO tired!

Anyway after collecting dad and Billy from the airport and being stuck in traffic for ages, finally made it back home and my dad’s reaction to the newly redecorated hallway was not how I expected it to be. I expected him to say something along the lines of “all by yourself? … really?... well I’m glad you’ve learnt something from me!... and you didn’t fall out once with your mum over the DIY?” (ok well that last one’s a bit of a lie, lol) but no my dad’s reaction was, wait for it… “Oh. You’ve changed it”. Just so calm, lol! Maybe it was the initial jet lag or something cos the day after he was checking every nook and cranny, which was quite amusing. Bilal’s reaction was just a lot of giggling… not sure if that was cos of my DIY skills or perhaps he had something dodgy on the way home when dad wasn’t looking! Ah well at least it’s done now. Next time I’ll try not to be so impulsive, lol.