Brummie Blogger

Bookcases!

Progress is being made. We went to Ikea on Monday, as planned. I was actually very well behaved and only bought what we went for. I got the Billy Bookcases I needed, some shelving for the wardrobes that I'd had on my shopping list for ages. It hadn't been worth the drive previously to fetch just that so we'd been waiting for a trip over there for something else. I also picked up a spare set of bedding, which was on the list for a different store, but Ikea had a set that was exactly what I wanted but half the price I'd expected to pay. And, that was it. The restraint!

I'd altered the Billy shopping list slightly from two 80cm and a 40cm to three 80cm. No, the wall in the bedroom hasn't mysteriously stretched. But, in the living room, one wall had a combination of one 80cm, two 40cm, and two 20cm Benno CD racks.

 
(This photo was taken during the original renovations last year, which is why there are no books on the shelves and a ratty old rug protecting the floor.)

It occured to me that the CDs were taking up valuable book space. So, I moved one 40cm upstairs. The Benno CD towers went into the gym, which is where the CD player is anyway, so that makes more sense. That left a nice 80cm gap. For books!

It did make slightly more work, especially the taking the assembled bookcase up the stairs. Our house is quite compact. With lots of doors and tight corners. It was interesting. We got there in the end though.

All the bookcases are now assembled and downstairs is pretty much finished. One side of the room has the lovely smelly old books in the 40cm bookcase. The new 80cm has mostly classics - my definition of classics that is. There's Austen and Hardy mixed in with a book of fairy tales I was bought on the day I was born, plus some very old dictionarys and encyclopedias. That sort of thing. The other 80cm has books that I'm particularly fond of. Lord of the rings, obviously. Ken Grimwood's Replay & Iain Banks' The wasp factory. The Sparrow, I never promised you a rose garden, Pest control, etc. etc.

The other side of the room is mostly To Be Read. I thought I'd have plenty of room left on the 80cm but (cough cough) it appears to be pretty much full. How on earth did that happen? The 40cm does have quite a bit of room on it as that has just 90 or so 1001 books that are waiting to be read. The remaining 80cm bookcase has loads of space on it as it has all my Vampire, Werewolf and other supernatural books on it. I'm afraid I took that as an invitation to go shopping this morning and purchased a few books for it on Amazon. Plus one in Tesco. I might stick my head in The Works tomorrow as well. Problem is, they do have to fit on the TBR bookcase first...

But enough of downstairs. The exciting bit is the shiny new bookcase-covered wall upstairs. Just look at this!

Is there anything lovelier? 200cm of bookcase - just waiting to be filled. The hinges are on but the doors won't go on until the books are all arranged as it's easier to fill them that way. You'd think there'd be plenty of space, wouldn't you? I certainly did and I couldn't wait to put all my books on there. I started top left, alphabetically. I took the time to put any series in order too.

I began to realise that I may have a problem when I got to the top of the third bookcase and still had three shelves worth of Ks to put on. King, Koontz, Kurtz, Kerr, Kijewski. Hmmm. Yeah. I've got a lot of Ms too. McCaffrey, McDermid. And Ps. Pargetter, Pratchett, Peters.

Solution. I left the Ks and started at the end and worked backwards. That worked great for a while. Then it didn't.

I now have two shelves left and I still have to fit on K to P.

You know, I could really do with some more bookcases.

Getting organised pt. 2

My books are in serious need of some organisation. Actual physical organisation, this time, as opposed to on a spreadsheet. In the living room I have several bookcases. When we renovated, I insisted on all matching bookcases - with glass doors. Very important, the glass doors. It means I can still see the lovely books but I don't have to keep dusting them. Also, the more valuable first editions and other old smelly books are safer and better protected.

Alas, this means I don't have nearly the amount of shelf space that I had previously as besides the seven mismatched bookcases I used to have upstairs, I also had two eight foot lengths of wall that were covered in shelving, from floor to ceiling. This was spaced precisely to accomodate paperbacks and so held rather a lot of books.

Now I did cull loads. Most went to the charity shop. It hurt and I did shed a tear when they went. It's hard parting with books and I'd had some of them for a very, very long time. But, there was some major decluttering going on and they had to go.

Currently I have only three 80cm and three 40cm bookcases in the living room plus two bookcases in the gym with mostly travel books, cookbooks and other non-fic. There are computer/reference books in my office plus a huge box of books to be BookCrossed, and then there is this, on the floor in the gym. The homeless ones...

I kinda ran out of bookcase when I was stacking them back onto shelves, after the renovation and new bookcase assembly. Ooops. And there they've sat ever since. They're probably the main reason I don't exercise much as every time I go into the gym, they sit there, looking at me accusingly. Books on the floor! It's probably illegal. And if it isn't, it darned well should be. Something has to be done about these poor homeless books.

And then there are the ones downstairs. They're on the bookcases, but not properly. The To Be Read bookcase has overflowed onto The Classics bookcase, which has had to overflow onto The Sci-fi bookcase. And that was overflowing all on its own. Books are lying on their sides on top of other books. Shock! Horror! 

So, I have a plan. Well, I had a plan, which was to buy fewer books, but as that wasn't working and it wasn't going to help the homeless books anyway, I've written it off as a Bad Plan. Pah! No, I have a better plan now. MORE BOOKCASES. I have just the spot for them. I reckon I can fit in two 80cm and one 40cm in the bedroom. I'll put crime/thriller/chicklit in there. That'll make space for Sci-fi to spread out a little downstairs, which'll give me more room for To Be Read books. That'll mean that Classics can have all of their bookcase back, which'll help out Sci-fi even more.

I think it'll work, it just needs a trip to Ikea and a week off to implement The Plan. And, guess what? I only have one more week to work, and then I have a week off. Sorted! I can't wait to start re-organising all my books. I just have to make sure I don't accidentally open one and start reading. If I do that, the plan is doomed.

 

Spiders!

I have discovered a distinct disadvantage to having pale coloured wooden flooring and minimal furniture.

The spiders have nowhere to hide. Also, as wooden flooring, unlike carpet, has no pile, the full length of their legs are on display so they look longer. Much longer. And they can run faster. Much faster.

This means that the spiders are now bigger, meaner, faster and are way, way more visible.

I don't like it.

I really do not like it.

Someone make them go away.

Please?

Too busy to blog - apparently

I have no idea where the time has gone. I've just checked the date of my last post and it was almost two weeks ago. Crikey!

So, what's been happening? Well, the bedroom renovation is still coming on very nicely. Not only is the floor finished, but we now have some furniture in there. And, it's partly assembled. The shells of the wardrobes are up, but they need to be fastened to the walls and each other before we can put doors on. The doors need to go on before we put the drawers and other fittings inside as we need to know where the hinges are going to go first. And, we can't quite fasten the end wardrobe to the other two until the electrican has been back to put the wiring through for the light switch as that has to be fastened onto the side of the wardrobe. And of course, we can't get the electrician in until the wardrobe is almost ready to be fastened to the others so we know exactly where it'll be sitting. Phew.

The two chests of drawers are done though, and are looking very lovely. One is a small two drawer to use as a bedside table and the other is a slim but tall unit with a lift up mirror on the top with a felt insert where I can keep my jewellery and whatnots. I've been lusting after this particular unit ever since I laid eyes on it at Ikea last year. See, some females lust after shoes and handbags. Me, it's sinks and drawer units. I'm odd that way.

We got quite a bit done on the renovation when we had that week off work but mostly we've been putting in a couple of hours after work each day so it's been taking some time to get stuff done. We're getting there though, and it's looking very nice indeedy. You'd hardly know it was the same room.

Ang was down from the Northern wastes last week and we had great fun on Friday and Saturday with coffee and shopping on one day and a trip to PaperArts on another. The PaperArts trip was allegedly for scrapping but Ang didn't actually stick one thing down all day. I didn't do a lot more. We did do a lot of chatting, shopping, and generally enjoying ourselves though. T'were bostin'.

At some point I'll take more photos of the bedroom but having just whacked my thumb with the hammer I'm not feeling inclined to go play photographer so it'll have to wait. Think I'll go find a good book and some chocolate to console myself.

Delayed by a duck

The renovation of the front bedroom has been coming on nicely. The walls are painted now so today, as we both had the day off, we decided to tackle the flooring. Once again we're putting the floor down ourselves. We've done all but one of the rooms downstairs, just leaving the large heavy ceramic tiles for the experts, and this flooring is supposed to be very, very easy to put down. (After the horror that was the utility room flooring we wanted something less likely to cause a divorce.) So, we made a fairly early start and had got the first strip of underlay fastened down with the first planks of floor ready and it was looking like it might all be going smoothly. 

Then I spotted something coming up the road. I couldn't tell what it was at first but then I realised it was a duck. With nine ducklings following behind. Just walking up the middle of the road. Not something you see every day, not in our road anyway as we don't have any water particularly close. The nearest is about a ten minute brisk walk for me, and I have longer legs than those ducks.

Aren't they just stinking cute? Ducks! I love them. I'm fascinated by them. And, instead of concentrating on laying our nice new floor, I spent the best part of an hour and a half watching the ducks from the window in between putting down the odd plank. Also, taking photos from the window. The result? Not much floor got put down.

I was a wee bit worried about them at one point as they looked as if they were lost. They were wandering up and down alleyways as if they were looking for somewhere/something. Then they went and played in the long grass on the island for a while before having a nap in next door's shrubbery. Then a neighbour let his yorkshire terrier out the front and the ducks all played dead. I was prepared to rush to their rescue but they were fine. To be honest, I think the duck would have fought off the yorkie just fine...

Eventually they wandered off and I was able to concentrate on the job in hand but we did only manage to get half the room done. The flooring though, was just as easy to put together as promised. I'll definitely stick to this brand in future as it's a complete doddle. No glue, no hammering, it just clicks. Love it.

Hopefully we'll get it finished before the furniture arrives.

Decorating binge

Last week's decorating binge went really well. The back bedroom/gym is done apart from a few bits that can't be completed until we can move furniture into other rooms when they've been done. The front bedroom is coming along nicely. We emptied it, which took a lot of doing as it was full of clutter having been our living room for the past twenty years. The charity shop has had a windfall! When it was completely empty, we stripped wallpaper, ripped up carpet, removed skirting, and sanded and filled the walls. I spent several hours chiselling glue off the back of the plastic skirting so it can go back on when the flooring is down - that was fun, I like playing with hammers ;-)

We've just been doing some more wallpapering - a couple more hours after work tomorrow will finish that and as the undercoat is on the woodwork, it won't take long to do the painting. We need one or two coats of paint on the wallpaper - we've used lining paper again, and then the floor can go down.

I haven't posted any pretty pictures for a while so here's a layout I did a few months ago but hadn't got around to uploading ->

We took advantage of one of the perks of staying on Disney and went to several 'Extra Magic Hours'. This was Epcot at night. You can see the delightful wristband that Stephen is wearing so the cast members know we're allowed to be there. They fasten them on well - they don't come off without scissors.

Epcot is lovely at night, especially when the fountain is going and I'm quite fond of this photo as the dark hides the other people lurking behind us.

All this uses is Basic Grey Granola - paper, chip sticker, border sticker and alpha stickers. I do love Granola - blues and browns - bostin'!

Tea

We're spending the day moving food from the old upstairs kitchen to the shiny new downstairs kitchen. It's causing some interesting debates as I know where I want everything, pretty much, and he doesn't necessesarily agree. I'm having to talk some sense into him. I find if I talk for long enough he gives in. Strange that...

I did expect to find a few horrors at the back of the cupboards. Mainly because Stephen does the cooking and the grocery shopping. His choice, not mine. This is going to end though. I have a lovely new kitchen and before he starts getting all possessive, I'm getting my stamp on it, hence the cupboard organising.

The back of the cupboard horrors, though. There were a couple of items slightly out of date. I'm a bit anal about these things so in the bin they went along with a dented tin of custard. Then the really interesting things started to emerge. An unopened packed of raisins from 2005. Why? We don't bake. Stephen isn't supposed to eat cake, he's diabetic. A jar of Piri-piri sauce from 2006. A few stock cubes from 2005 and then a handful of sugar-free jelly mixes from 2004. Vile stuff that. I did find an opened packet of twiglets from a couple of weeks ago that were still nice and crunchy. I ate those. Marmite - mmmmm. 

Then I came across this. It will get used before the date is up so not a problem but I just wanted to share my husband's tea addiction. Bear in mind he's the only tea drinker in the house and then look at the size of this bag of tea-bags.

 

We won't mention the catering size tub of Kenco coffee sitting in the cupboard though, eh?

Where did those two weeks go?

Is it really that long since I blogged? I know things have been a bit hectic but I didn't think I'd neglected my blog for two weeks. Oops.

This month so far, I've had two mad selling sessions on Ebay and raised enough for one basic laptop or half towards the one that I actually want. I think I'll see if there's anything else I can sell before making a final decision there.

The new TV finally arrived and I spent most of a day playing with lots and lots of wires. The back of the new cabinet looks like a plate of spaghetti gone mad, but at least it's all out of sight. In the process of moving the TV decoder boxes around I managed to kill my broadband connection. As I wasn't sure that it was the move round that had caused my internet to vanish, I waited a while to see if it was just down, then went through the routine of rebooting the modem, fiddling with all the connections, running diagnostics, crying etc. I couldn't check the status to see if there was a problem as I couldn't get online and I couldn't call the broadband helpline as the number is on the bill and I have online billing - and I couldn't get online. (I have since made a note of that number.)

That was on Friday. On Saturday morning at 7.30am, on the verge of a nervous breakdown, I phoned Virgin Media. Within three hours an engineer had been to the house and fixed it. Virgin Media are Gods. Neil Herring, Virgin Media engineer, is a genius and if his boss is reading this can you please give him a bonus. He deserves it. Ok?

Tuesday a migraine struck, so it was straight to bed when I got in from work. I made it in to work on Wednesday but I don't remember a great deal about it. Back to bed when I got in and there I stayed until yesterday lunchtime. Luckily I had a lieu day yesterday as I'd have had to go in to work but I have no idea what they'd have done with me as I was even worse than on Wednesday.

Another migraine struck this afternoon which is an an absolute bummer as we were supposed to be entertaining for the first time in our new living room. Jo and Kan were coming over but I had to cancel at the last minute. We had a lovely dinner planned and I was really looking forward to seeing them both. The migraine hasn't quite gone yet but quite frankly I'm getting a bit sick of being in bed, hence the blog updating.

I entered the book that I finished earlier this week into my 'books read' page this morning and realised that it's halfway through the month and I've only read four books. Looks like blogging isn't the only thing that I haven't found time for. I haven't had any bookrings yet this month, until now that is. Two arrived yesterday and one today, along with a RABCK from Finland. Thank you to Bookwormess for sending me Les Miserables. I've been after reading that for ages.

Oh, and I sent for my tickets for Mickey's very merry Christmas party for when we go on our hols, and they arrived by courier six days later. My ticket has Goofy on it and Stephen's has Mickey on it. I can't wait for that. They make it snow on Main Street you know. And you get hot chocolate and cookies. I love it!

That was exciting!

I'd forgotten just how much fun selling on Ebay could be. My four Swarovski items just finished. All sold and all did well. One item got two bids in the last thirty seconds and shot up another ten quid. Not that I was obsessively refreshing the page or anything...

I've prepared another five items to upload but these almost certainly won't do as well as I don't have the boxes for them. Three are retired items though so you never know. I've found some other bits round the house that might sell so now I've got the bug again I'll put those up over the weekend.

The most exciting thing to happen today though was the phone call from DFS. The sofas are coming tomorrow. Funny thing is, they did say it would be between six and twelve weeks for delivery. I was going to ring them tomorrow as it will be exactly twelve weeks. Looks like they're just going to make it then.

If only the TV would turn up we could move into our shiny new living room. We had a phone call last week to arrange delivery. We agreed on a day and then the next day they phoned us to arrange delivery. We were a bit puzzled and explained that we'd already spoken to someone the previous day and done just that. Apparently they had no record of it and there was no way they could deliver then anyway. We suggested today as we'd both be in all day. That seemed as if it might be a problem but they said they'd see if it was possible and phone back to confirm. We've heard nothing since. It can come any time between 8am and 8pm so there's two hours left before we'll know if it's coming today or not. We can't contact them as we don't have a contact number and the retailer only has an email address and won't pass it on to us. Great.

But, I'm still excited 'cause my Ebay items all sold *grin*

We have tables

One of the last few things to get for the new living room was a nest of tables. I wanted something modern looking, pale wood and not too big. We've been looking for months and I was starting to wonder if such a thing existed.

Today, Stephen suggested going to Levines, a local shop, to see if they had anything. It's such a strange place. They have all sorts of furniture, but all jumbled up and crammed in. You practically have to climb over one of the sofas to get in the doors. There's just room to get past most of the pieces and you keep spotting different things as you walk round. A table you can see from one part of the shop is invisible from the rest of it so you do have to explore. It's quite the adventure.

They did have several nests of tables, and two of them fitted the bill. Of course, having found none at all for months and then being faced with two, I had problems making a decision. Especially as they were on opposite sides of the store. The nice chap in the shop carried one of them across so I could compare them side by side and I dithered some more. One of them would definitely have matched the wood finish of the floor and the furniture better but the other was much more modern looking. In the end I went for the modern one but only after the shop staff agreed that I could pop back and change it for the other one if it looked hideous against my floor. They were very obliging.

The tables don't look too bad at all. They're a lot paler than the rest of the wood, but they definitely don't look hideous.

I just need the TV and sofas to arrive now. I'm getting very impatient to move in!