The paintful truth

Our new home requires plenty of mysterious alterations and upgrades which we have no choice but to leave in the hands of qualified professionals. But there's one thing we can handle ourselves, and that's painting. Seems easy enough, and I've done it plenty of times before - just slap on a couple of coats and ta-daa, you have yourself a blank canvas upon which to build your new life. Yay, right? 

Well, of course it's not that simple. Mercifully, my selective memory had erased the extent of work required for this job:

Measure walls, survey room in daylight and lamplight, pick a colour, doubt your decision and procrastinate with episodes of Monkey Life, study painting leaflets, ogle Pinterest, finally decide on a colour, walk to store and purchase, while suppressing a rising fury at the impossible amount of choice available. Take a closer look at the room and notice several cracks and holes. Go back to store, buy paint, rollers, brushes, Polyfilla and sandpaper. Throw in some chocolate. This is a good start.

Then, forcefully remove 30-year-old skirting boards and flimsy floorboards, shove all in hallway thus obstructing passageway, plaster edges, fill holes, leave to dry, watch some Monkey Life. Sandpaper dried plaster, find some more holes, fill and smooth, leave to dry; back to Monkey Life. Vacuum, scrub ceiling, scrub walls, accidentally scrub off some plaster which hadn't dried properly, re-plaster, leave to dry. Tape all edges, paint all edges, paint ceiling, paint walls; repeat. 

One room alone takes days and days and days! And I knew this! But I conveniently suppress it every time, because self-preservation.

So with the required amount of devoted TLC, our office-to-be has gone from this:

To this:

Via this:

Floors and skirting boards (and everything else) to follow. This room has become a sanctuary of peace; a testament to what is possible, when all else looks like this:

Onwards and upwards.

Majsa x

Not always rosy, but sometimes a fine red

At the upper end of the King's Mile, lurking in the shadows of the ancient walls that wrap around the cathedral, lies a hidden gem of a restaurant called Posillipo.

This is where Mike and I sat eight months ago, devouring what seemed like the best bloody Italian we had ever tasted - but this superlative may have been at least partly thanks to the particularly jolly mood we were in that evening. We had come to Canterbury for the weekend to suss out the place, and so far it was ticking all the boxes.

We shivered with satisfaction, cosy and content among the restaurant's terracotta walls with exposed brick, and warmed by gently flickering oil candles. Through the wide windows, we marvelled at the sight of jagged flint walls punctured by narrow, gothic windows; the sky behind it slowly fading into orange with the setting sun.

"Oooohh.... Imagine living here!" we exulted. "Look at this place! Look at those walls! Look at this street!"

"If we lived in Canterbury," Mike mused, "we could eat here every day!"

We had ordered a bottle of wonderfully smooth Barbera D'Asti, and we raised a hopeful glass to our potential future.

"One day," we promised ourselves.

Eight months later, we're back at Posillo, joyously lifting another glass of Barbera D'Asti - this time to celebrate our success.

"We made it!" sound our cries of glory, our glasses clinking and our faces grinning. It has undeniably been a testing time, but we believe the worst is finally over. Tonight we rejoice.

No, we haven't eaten here every day - this is our first time back - but the point is, now we can.

Tools, tools, tools!

A girl's childhood dream has finally come true, in the form of a sturdy and well-organised toolbox! 

The various bits of hardware I've accumulated over the years have thus far been kept in antagonising disorder, divided into some bags and two boxes. One of these was the broken remains of a plastic £4 toolbox, purchased in youthful fervour when I was first entering the "adult world" (yeah right - I hadn't seen nothing yet) back in Lewisham all those years ago. I think it took two whole days before it broke, but I nonetheless kept the cracked remains and frugally lugged it between the five places I have since called home, while longingly gazing upon those hardy, capacious Stanley containers and the day I would consider myself grown-up enough to deserve such a beast.

Today is the day! It is sorted and organised and my OCD is blushing with pride and contentment. Never underestimate the amount of time you can shave off a DIY job if you actually know where your tools are!

Also, never underestimate the importance of picking the right tool for the job. Yesterday, as I returned from a B&Q mission to acquire yet more tools, I found Mike furiously scraping at remains of wallpaper. He had been at it for hours, but it just wasn't budging.

"Maybe try steaming it?" I suggested. 

"Yeah, that's what it said online to do," Mike replied, a little deflated. 

"So it didn't work?"

What do you do when the online DIY gurus tell you to steam the wallpaper before removing it? Do you: 

a) Boil water in a kettle, pour it into a thermos flask, bring it upstairs, undo the lid and try to let out some steam from the thermos?

b) Pour said water into a mug, hold this against the wallpaper, and hope against hope that enough steam will soak through and loosen the glue? or

c) Use your £100 multi-purpose steam mop which comes with a convenient wall scraper?

Trust my inventive husband to try both option a) and option b) without even considering option c)! 😂

After ten seconds of steam mopping, the wallpaper peeled off like cling film. 

Other tools, we have noticed, bring unforeseen complications - such as the infuriating impossibility for bespectacled nerds such as us to wear dust masks. It's like constantly standing in front of a freshly opened dishwasher. 

Meanwhile, there are some tools that the previous owner appears to never have heard of.

Such as masking tape.

Or a spirit level.

Ah well, that is why we call it the Topsy Turvy Manor. We simply do as the Canterburians and embrace the wonk.

But the best, most versatile, and most helpful tool I have available to get me through this mess, is this one:

Love to y'all.

Majsa x

The town

Embrace the wonk!

Every time I walk through Canterbury, I love it even more. Bearded buskers strum on guitars, never mind it being midnight and raining. Hidden alleyways carve their way through medieval buildings, dark timber supporting their crooked walls and precarious roofs. The town is positively swarming with bohemian cafes, kitschy vintage shops, colourful hippies, reckless students, and grubby pubs untouched by time. Buildings are old, people are nice, shops play Elvis, and the town market is beyond charming. It's like someone thought, "Hmm, I think I'm going to create a city just for Kajsa." How kind of them!

The humble Great Stour River trickles through the town, along it a showcase of yesteryear's enchanting architecture and a handful of verdant hideaways. And of course, the country's most famous cathedral towers above it all.

I think we've found home.

The house

Our leafy suburbia paradise

We have found the most peaceful spot this side of the ring road. So close to town, and snug up against the busy St Peter's roundabout, and still somehow when you step outside, it's all birdsong and birches and moonlight.

Inside the house, however, it's a different story. How the previous owners managed to neglect this place to such a flabbergasting extent, is beyond us. Walls are black with grease, carpet surely carries more than a few diseases, kitchen was covered in limescale and murky god-knows-what. Don't even get me started on the fusty hole where they kept their kids.

My two-week adrenaline rush suddenly subsided, and looking around at the colossal job we had before us, I could only collapse in dizzy exhaustion. Meanwhile, my hero husband Mike walked two miles to Argos to buy a heater, and lugged the heavy beast another two miles back. I can't tell you how relieved I was to wake up to warmth!

"People smiled at me all the way home," Mike said, bewildered at the friendliness of small-town life. "It was weird!"

Yay for Canterbury!

Now we set about breaking down the task at hand. After having some real characters round to look at the place, we have finally found and booked a builder to remove the wall between the kitchen and the living room. Hopefully they can also a) earth the flickering and treacherous electrics; b) extend the gas exhaust pipe so we don't die from carbon monoxide poisoning; c) replace the plumbing so that we can finally do our laundry (we're fast running out of pants!); and another long list of less deadly but no less important bits and bobs.

Our indie movie life continues, and we've at least set up a cosy temporary office space on the top floor. Mike particularly enjoys watching the bird swarms at 4:30 every afternoon.

We've got three floors! That's a lot (!) of stairs, but also a pretty view :)

Takeaway, Netflix and loooove - ain't that all a man needs? Oh, and beer.

Our city escape

We packed up our flat in a seriously misjudged and heart-thumpingly frantic daze. We would have been scratching our heads at the sheer amount of stuff we (read: I) own, except we had no time to do anything but lift, wrap, box, scrub, run, gobble microwave meals while wrapping some more, and calling to reschedule our moving van because of our (well, mostly my) frankly epic miscalculation of timings.

One last look at the glinting city we were leaving behind.

On the midnight train out of London, still catching our breaths underneath mountains of bulky bags containing the last of our belongings, we sat grinning in satisfaction. We had made it. The city was behind us.

Our greasy crackhouse sleephole

We arrived in the freezing dark, trying to figure out what was where, which button did what. Managed to switch on the heating, but then we noticed an unnerving smell of burning plastic and saw a trail of smoke rising from our boiler. No heat, icy air, steaming breaths. Phones had died, but the sockets didn't seem to work. Found a mysterious string in the ceiling, what could that be for? Pulled a blind which fell right off the wall. Just as it should be.

Not wanting to disturb our new neighbours, we suppressed our delirious giggles as we hauled our mattress up to the third floor.

"Camping indoors!" Mike said in an attempt to keep our spirits up, his breath steaming up his glasses.

"Camping indoors," I confirmed with a shiver, and kept my coat and jeans on as I joined Mike under the layers of blankets.

And so it began.

Where pigeons sing instead of croak

We have moved. After years of plotting, planning, questioning, researching, and nursing baby pigeons to adulthood on our Woolwich balcony, we have finally taken the step and done the thing and moved the stuff.

We now find ourselves chest-deep in grown-up stuff, like bin collections, boiler repairs, and an urgent need for a driver's licence.

The list of to-dos grows ever longer as each day passes, but so does the list of ticks. It's all about perspective. For now, let's just say - although I miss Smithy and Roger and all the rest of them terribly - it's lovely to finally live in a place where the pigeons let off a polite sing-songy "hoo-hoooo-hoo" instead of the more rabid 6am wake-up call of "rrrrrhhh, rrrhhhhh, rrhhhhh, rrrrrrhhh."

Also, it's a bonus that our new town, the old 7th century pagan stronghold of Canterbury, literally looks like this:

Meanwhile, we look like this, and can but cross our fingers and hope we don't make too much of a mess:

And for good measure, a #tbt little Roger pestering his impatient mother, Rita - may whatever remains of his ragged Woolwich existence be filled with joy and breadcrumbs; and may he visit our lovely friends and new tenants Lucian and Viviana on a regular basis (especially when we're around):

#majsamadeamess

More to come. 

Missing all of yous.

Majsa x