Spoilt..

Having had the time to make this room happen the way I want it to has led to two dilemmas. The first being how am I going to achieve this look and the second is how will I approach this physically.

My neighbour came over to visit last Friday. A lovely man who has always been been willing to assist a damsel in distress.. He helped me to measure the walls all so now I know that at certain points the walls are up to an inch out of whack. It's no surprise that the first attempt to draw the lines went so badly so quickly.

So to adddress the first dilemma I need to create a white border around each wall which takes into account the slack created by cracked and bent out of shape walls. This will leave a perfectly aligned space in the main part of the wall with which I can display the most wanted stripes to ever exist.

Instead of spending Sunday afternoon preparing the room for this, I did manage to succumbe to the call of William and ended up lunching in the gritty end of an upmarket street in one of Melbournes' trendy suburbs. Five hours later I felt incredibly cold and I'm sure William felt incredibly drunk, but nonetheless I felt better for getting pent-up issues off my chest and apart from the parking ticket I received (I'm certain they changed the sign on me - there were street works going on around us) it was time well spent.

Sunday evening saw me at one of my regular dance gigs, still talking to anyone about these stripes and low and behold, I had an offer of help from someone I barely knew!! Happy to have the offer of help but then instantly unsure whether to allow a stranger into my house to perform a demanding task - I was concerned about taking advantage - for both of us. While I was discussing this with someone else, I received a second offer of help - suddenly I was spoilt for help!! Walking over to introduce the two and explain the development, my first offer waved goodbye and left the venue. What the..?

Having someone to paint the ceiling so that my head doesn't fall of my shoulders was still a blessing, but then I spoke to JD Monday morning who was coming to visit Melbourne for a week, could he stay at my place and would I like help with my room? Then there were two again!!

So at the moment I'm waiting for JD to arrive fresh from dental hell, but I'm sure that between the two of us we can at least get the ceiling done over the next week - I even have assistance in reserve if I need it. Suddenly I'm spoilt for help from nice people who have nothing to gain by their offer of help.

I only hope that soon, when I'm creating clothes/furniture/products or anything that takes my fancy. Someone will be able to say of my work; "This is really lovely and helpful. Thank you - I feel quite spoilt!"

The White Stripes dilemma continued...

Well thankfully some of the heat has left the metaphorical kitchen. There was a time factor involved in getting this room happening which no longer exists. I am left with another problem of painting over everything and starting again to do this the right way which would be fine except for the pain factor. Saw a surgeon yesterday who told me that it will be fine to do these things but it won't make it any less painful. On bad days there is codeine though.

The good news is that I managed to get an undercoat on the floorboards. This has been the highlight of my week. I had been visiting hardware stores asking about the best way to go about painting the floorboards white and keeping them that way. Every single person I have mentioned this to has told me not to do this, which only made me more determined. The last straw was a visit from my mother whose comment about the floorboards going white was that I would live to regret it. The feeling of relief at the first strokes of the roller going over those boards was blissful. I felt as though I was coming home.

Now I need to decide whether I keep the walls pink. I am toying with painting the whole room white and beginning again. Will people know the difference between a white room with pink stripes rather than the current plan of a pink room with white stripes? Could my sanity cope? I really want to just get in there and start designing already, it's quite frustrating.

At least I now have access to online radio and it's plugged in to my very exquisite stereo. It is a cold and wet day outside so being stuck inside with some ultimately interesting decisions will have the best vibe I could hope for. I just need to grab a coin to help me make those decisions...

My theory is that good design should be practical, helpful and as often as possible - beautiful. However, I am dealing with a most unhelpful design at the moment and it almost has me beaten.

You see, I want to turn my recently vacant room into a colourful, cheerful and beautiful place to work and create. In order to do justice to the deep dusky pink walls, they need white stripes and nothing else will do. Unfortunately, a whole bunch of impracticals stood in the way which include physical limitations, uneven and cold walls as well as no particular clue as to the best way to achieve this look.

Friends came over on the weekend to help with the physical limitations, they reached areas my neck refuses to at the moment and my brother - the engineering consultant, came over later with his house mate for a second shift. Probably the wrong order but that's how impractical things go.

At the end of the day, half of one wall was taped, ready for painting because the engineering consultant refused to do any more given how badly the lines were ruled. Later on Tuesday, I was running out of the house to get to work, glanced in the window and saw half of the measely bits of very expensive painters tape just hanging around - about an inch off the wall. Yeah, normal tape could never do that.

Consoled myself by catching up on an episode of Dr Who I had missed only to discover that even the Daleks could manage a paint job and I still had had no luck.