A little privacy required

Peter starts work on the curtain rails

We have succumbed to net curtains!   Not something we would normally do but we've noticed too many people pressing their noses to the windows and staring in!   We are right on the street and the temptation to peer in is clearly too great.   The remarks are mainly very complimentary, but all the same.   We have only gone for half curtains as a compromise. 

Peter fixes the door knob back on

We spent last week in Southwold mainly decorating our bedroom.   We've done an OK job - good enough for government work Peter tells me!  The quality of the paintwork won't win any prizes but at least it's all clean and fresh and we were able to get the bed and the chest of drawers out of the bathroom at last and give them a good clean.  We haven't been in there since the building work started and it was pretty dusty.  So now our bedroom is restored and we can use the bathroom. 

At the weekend Peter got the curtain tracks up on the two front sash windows and today I went down and started re-working the curtains we brought from London.  This involves a great deal of crawling around on the floor measuring and cutting.  I managed to get one curtain finished, hemmed and hung.  Three to hand...and that's just the windows at the front of the sitting room. 13 curtains  more to go!!

In which we get the sitting room into shape and start on our bedroom...

At last, we have cleaned the sitting room, removed the dust sheets and scattered furniture about.   It's beginning to look civilised.   We have taken the loose covers off the old settee that was left in the house.  Peter isn't keen on it, but it's really comfortable so I'm rooting for it.  The covers have been dropped off at a dry cleaners to be appraised for cleaning and dyeing.   We shall see if it's possible and how they turn out.    We need to find some rugs now.

I've been round the house in Norwich collecting up books that I've never got round to reading or have only got as far as the first chapter, and have taken them down to Southwold and started filling up the shelves in the sitting room. 

One end of the sitting room

The other end

We were going to start putting up the new curtain tracks this weekend, but we discovered that none of the packages contained the right number of fixings!   Most annoying and odd for good old John Lewis.   We called in on our way back to Norwich and they gave us the extra pieces we needed.   We may get some of them up tomorrow and that will be an incentive to start on the curtains.

The Liss lights

Instead of putting up the curtain tracks, we started decorating our bedroom.   We managed to paint the insides of the fitted wardrobes (unnecessary in my opinion!) and put two coats on the ceiling.  Quite good progress!   Tomorrow we go again and see what the paint colour we chose looks like on the walls - last thing today we painted some patches on three different walls to get the effect.  

Peter did all sorts of running repairs and improvements to the front door fittings and put up the lampshades in the sitting room.   These lampshades are original 70s shades and were given to us by our friends Barrie and Marion Liss when they moved from Stafford to France.   We had one in the Barbican, left by the previous occupant, and were delighted that the Stafford Lisses bequeathed theirs to us.  

And lastly, we purchased a tree at Darsham Nursery.  A Malus John Downie, which will have great blossom in the spring and fruit in the autumn.   https://goo.gl/images/UCX2uL