Wallpaper.....

So one week after the wedding and we are all back to normal now. We have finally stopped saying; "This time last week we...."

Papa and I decided to throw ourself into decorating our new home and getting it ready for the summer. We had selected the wallpaper for the dining room and the living room a while ago and decided that now was the time to do it!

Papa is amazing at things like this - his DIY skills are brilliant - mine are rubbish but what I lack in talent I make up for in enthusiasm (to coin a phrase) - Oddly enough on our way back from the wedding we were listening to the Paddington stories on audio cd (read by Stephen Fry - excellent). One of the stories, which TJ thought was hilarious, was the one where Paddington decides to 'help' the Brown's by wallpapering his own room with disastrous results. I'm not sure if that was what put the idea into my head but by the end of the journey we were all geared up to spend the weekend up to our furry little ears in wallpaper and paste.

The living room was a joy to do - we covered everything and I was in charge of pasting - it was a good idea to cover everything as I am a little splash happy with paste and ended up with more of it on me than on the walls. But Papa has a great eye and my Habitat lined paper was up and it looked vertical - Papa had used a spirit level to ensure everything was in line....

We then moved to the dining room and I had selected a 1950's style paper which matches our white washed wooden floors. All good - there was a slight gap in the paper - due to a bend in the wall apparently (or thats what Papa said), but we can hide that behind our pictures - so again all good. We had a roll of paper left and half a bucket of paste. 'Right," I said, "Let's go back to the store and we can get a couple of rolls of paper and do the wall behind our bed."A brilliant idea!

So we went back but the paper I had chosen had sold out! I decide that was good thing as we didn't want the same paper as everyone else, so Papa chose a beautiful silver/grey paper with a wave in it. Fantastic! We bought two rolls and knew we could get them up before the kids bath time.

We raced upstairs and covered everything and then got started. It was as we put up the first roll that Papa realised it was silk and being a silk paper it moved... a lot... and having a wave in it it needed lining up... and that meant a lot more work and a lot of wasted paper. Our quick job ended up taking over 3 hours - the children were in the bath and I was running up and downstairs sorting them out whilst also helping Papa who was stuck up a ladder matching paper. Suddenly Papa gave out an anguished cry. I raced back into the room. "We don't have enough paper!" he cried. Sure enough there were two small gaps at the bottom of the wall which were unpapered. The shop was now closed and I didn't really want to spend that amount of money to cover two small gaps. I suggested that we just piece it together with some of the scraps - after all that area was behind the bed and no-one would see it. "But I'll know its there!" cried Papa.

I told him the story of my own Dad who papered the living room when I was a child. It was only when we moved house that we realised he hadn't bothered to paper behind the furniture and when we took that furniture out you could see great big gaps where it had been. This seemed to placate him and he went ahead to patch the bottom of the wall.

Panic over - wallpapering done - furniture put back... and no-one will be any the wiser. Unless they have read this blog of course!!!!!!!!!