TIN OF PAINT (PART 1)

Surely every home has a junk room? What about making your life even more complicated and doubling up the junk room as an office? If I said that only 4 months ago, if you walked into the “office” in our house there would only be a clear way from the door to the desk, which is about 4ft. In the event of wanting to open the window, climbing boots and rope would be handy items to have. The cats loved it, there was enough paper, C.D.s and videos to play with and hide under that on rainy days when they didn’t want to go out, there was still the office in which to have an adventure.

The problem with a junk room, is that when you decide that “enough is enough” and want to smarten it up, there’s always the problem of where to put “the junk”. Every flat surface was already piled high and this was made worse by our mistake purchase.

Years ago, when Pat and I first moved in together, there were loads of relatives and friends who said they would come and see us and so we thought we were very “forward planning” in purchasing a Bed Settee. Guess what ....... not one of them turned up LOL. When we’ve moved house, the bed settee has always moved with us, heaven knows why we missed opportunities. That bed settee has only ever been used by the cats not only for them to sleep on but they took to trimming their claws on it too. It became an eye-saw and nuisance from almost as soon as we’d bought it. Too big and heavy to get rid of ourselves it became part of the “office pile-up” and had paperwork, books, more cds, videos, even photographs, an old record player and (the list is endless) anything which wasn’t already floating around the floor went on the settee. There was no complaint from the cats as this all added to the adventure playground.

The room was really an embarrassment. We’ve never decorated it since we’ve been here, which is now 5 years. Previously a nursery to the previous couple’s 2 year old son, it’s painted baby blue and has a boarder running round the centre of the walls with animals and baby words on it. Our Joshua (one of the younger cats) discovered that, if he stood on the back of the settee he could remove the baby boarder (obviously not to his taste) however he felt it needed the striped effect as he’s left a foot gap between each rip. Shouldn’t complain, he’s obviously been hinting it’s time we decorated.

This weekend, we finally got rid of the cumbersome item of furniture!

My God! I can get to the window! If I wanted to I could even do celebratory rollie-pollies round the floor! I immediately introduced the vacuum cleaner to the large area of carpet that hadn’t seen daylight for 5 years.

There now remains a book case, a filing cabinet and a cd rack and, of course, the desk, all of these items will be staying, but the room looks bare and empty in comparison to its previous state. This is when I get the urge to visit the local Wickes store and purchase the much needed tin of paint. Once the room is decorated we’ll furnish it properly and ensure that it doesn’t go back to its old state. This could be a lovely sunny room and I find it quite relaxing painting walls once I finally get started. Gotta buy that tin of paint! Watch this space .......