All quiet on the lounge front

Nothing's ever simple, as I've mentioned several times in the past on this blog. Even the simplest job will turn out to have some weird glitch to trip you up. Yesterday's glitch was the size of my gun. Not big enough by a long shot (haha!).

Yes the day was taken up with those last few tidy-up jobs that mark the end of another decorating era. Screwing the power sockets back on, touching up the paint splashes, runs, and missed bits, sweeping up the dust and paint shavings, removing the tools from the work area.

And finally, in this case, applying a bead of sealant to the skirting boards to stop the howling gale that blows up from the sub-floor and would, if not stopped, turn the edges of the new carpet black in no time. The first tube of sealant went down without incident, being a tube I had left over from the last job. When I came to cut the seal off the next tube though, I realised I had a problem. I'd bought two trade-sized tubes of decorator's caulk, and they were just two inches too long to fit in my standard, amateur's gun.

An emergency dash to B&Q, fast becoming the highlight of every single DIY project I've ever undertaken, was called for. There are no photos on this blog entry, because the sight of me in my decorating clothes is one I don't normally share with the world. Apologies then to those few poor unfortunates who happened to choose this particular rainy Sunday afternoon for a shopping trip to B&Q, and thereby suffered an even greater shock than such an outing would normally visit upon them.

Ten pounds poorer but with a professional caulking gun in hand (and two regular-sized tubes of caulk too, in case the gun still wasn't the right size), I returned home and finished the job.

Now the lounge sits silently, emptily waiting to have its carpet laid, and every noise from the rest of the house echoes around its newly-decorated, but still spartan, walls.