You must forgive me for the recent lack of blog activity on my part – this month I have been mostly….stripping paint off the staircase. Literally every day in Swansea since early December has been spent sat on the stairs removing in excess of 8 coats of various paints and varnishes – in total I have got through:

- 4 litres of NitroMors (really strong paint stripper – other brands are available)

- 4 scrapers

- 20 sheets of sandpaper

- 5 dust masks

- 3 pairs of rubber gloves

- my marbles

So, as you can imagine – any blog entries written during that time would have been (paint stripper) fume-fuelled ramblings (you would have never noticed the difference : ) ).

Anyway I am pleased to say that after a number of minor chemical burns to my face, the stairs are now ‘done’. I’m currently preparing the house for the arrival of my building team who are due to start in mid-January (early February no doubt). Graham and ‘his boys’ are predicting 6 to 8 weeks to finish the job but again I’m just hoping for Easter!

So far I’ve removed all the wallpaper, sanded down half the interior doors, removed all the wardrobes, curtains and randomly abandoned trinkets. I’ve given the sanded doors a coat of primer and an undercoat and have removed the upstairs carpets. I’m in that horrible position of now having a house that looks worse than when I bought it!


My next exciting tasks are to remove the strange vinyl wallpaper from the chimneybreast in the living room and to chip off the floor to ceiling wall tiles in the family bathroom.

In the middle of all this I’ve also had the unfortunate task of evicting an aggressive tenant and spent much of Boxing Day afternoon fixing a shower. Christmas wasn’t all bad though – I’m now the proud owner of a 6-in1 workbench as well as a number of other DIY essentials, still trying to find the perfect tool belt though….

However, as promised, not much to report. I’ve attached some photos of the stairway ‘transformation’ – pretend to be impressed : )