When a room becomes a room

It's been a quiet week on the bedroom redecoration front as we watched the damp patches receding, and worried about whether they were receding quickly enough. My plan had me applying the first (sealer) coat of white emulsion to walls and ceiling today, and it was touch and go whether the drying would be complete or not. Other activities during the week (including the famed monthly curry night) were suspended in favour of preparation - mainly sanding of windows and skirting boards - which was hampered on account of having fingers permanently crossed.

This is a self-imposed deadline, it's true, but the plan is designed to avoid this job hanging on longer than necessary. No-one enjoys having the entire house turned upside down, and one of the best ways to keep up the pace of painting is to book the carpet fitters and work to that date as an immutable fixed future point. Even though it's not really.

This stage of the proceedings is always one of my favourites. It's the moment when a room in progress turns from a building site, with its bare plaster and woodwork splashed with dried PVA, back into something that's recognisably a room.

The finish may be patchy (I always apply two coats of white before the colour) and the woodwork still has that post-sanding mottled aspect that makes it look vaguely diseased, but it's no longer just a newly-plastered room. It's visibly on its way to becoming a bedroom once more.

I took a risk, in the end, with the dampness. There were still one or two small patches of plaster not entirely dry. I won't know until tomorrow whether this will be a problem. The last time I started painting too early the second coat ripped the first coat off in places, leading to all kinds of patching up and rework issues. Very frustrating, not to mention physically demanding, as it was the ceiling causing the problem. This time the trouble, if there is any, is restricted to small areas of wall. Fingers crossed I'll get away with it, but for the moment at least, the deadline is safe.