We decided to commit to the grey and commenced painting our bedroom this weekend.

You tend to forget how horribly arduous the process is until you are in the midst of it. Until I enter a kind of painterly meditative state, my unspoken mantra is “we should have paid a painter, we should have paid a painter”.

Of course we shouldn’t pay a painter – it would cost at least 10x what we’re spending and we’re trying to embrace the frugal.

Yesterday we primed the trim. Joe/Frank had done a stellar job of roughing up the gloss with a sanding block earlier in the week. I instructed him not to sand the trim in the wardrobe because we were planning to attack it after we’d completed the bedroom, but once I started I was so enthusiastic that I kept painting. Unfortunately, I misread the tin and thought I could paint straight on gloss with sanding being an optional extra. I realised my error when the primer began peeling off … oh dear.

So, I was forced to sand off a good half of what I had painted and repaint, which was extraordinarily messy and took forever. Clearly I had forgotten how revolting sanding is and immediately afterward complimented Joe/Frank on his extreme patience. I think we’ll be using esp on the gloss in future, hopefully this will eliminate choking to death on dust.

Today I was on my own and busted out the grey!

It did not start out terribly well, in the first 30 minutes sustained a huge bruise from spontaneously burst blood vessel in my right wrist and had pinched right breast while assembling the roller (don’t ask).

Progress is really rather slow, just two walls took all day, but I am quite pleased with how it is going.

But I suspect this is going to take at least a month – there is lots and lots and lots of trim – probably more than any other room.

It is doing a particularly marvellous job of keeping me off the InformationSuperHighway! So if I vanish for a time, you know where to find me.