This weekend saw Ross and I make great progress with decorating the bathroom.
The resulting effect makes the room much fresher. We've retained the white walls and
ceiling but the paintwork is now a lovely sky blue colour. On the walls to the
right you can see a couple of objects on the wall; one is a photograph of me body
surfing on a beach in southern Spain, the other is a mirror set in a tiled mosaic.
Keith took the photograph and gave me the
mirror as a present one year.
You get some idea of the difference by comparing things now from how they looked
four years' ago. This decorating is part of a process of me settling myself again.
I felt that I wanted to make some improvement to the house but I also felt that, if
I began a big job that took me an age to complete, I should become demoralised.
The bathroom has given me a good degree of confidence. The next task is the guest
bedroom in advance of my parents' visit at
Christmas.
One of the great improvements in the bathroom is that we had a carpenter in to fix the sash windows so that they both now open. We've also got proper finger grips and a screw lock for it. He also did some other work for us like fixing the sill in the front bay window, inserting a lining into the cupboard over the range in the kitchen and putting up some shelves under the stairs so that we can comfortably house Ross's two wheelchairs and store various bits and pieces there as well. There are some further painting jobs for me there as well.
We've also had a plumber in to fix a new tap in the kitchen. All in all, it's been a
very domestically productive week.
Elsewhere in the Kimberley Avenue household, peace reigns supreme. After a slightly
frosty start, Nutkin and
Jemima have settled in nicely together. Jemima
watches Nutkin all the time and learns from what he does. Initially, she would topple
over every time that she tried to groom her hind legs. Now she has seen how it's done,
she grooms herself excellently.
The two of them have also taken to curling up together and sleeping on our bed
particularly as it is now cold enough for Ross to use the electric blanket before
he retires. Although Nutkin still growls at her when she is overly insistent about
playing, they are generally enjoying each other's company enormously.