God, 2025 nearly killed us:
we put in solar panels and a battery (visits from sales, engineers, plumbers, electricians, actual installation);
we put in new bookshelves in the dining room (built in situ and took weeks and weeks, pleasing result but lengthy disruption);
we had the house painted inside, not all of inside but most of inside (the most disruptive thing we did, horrendous – the painter was extremely taciturn and the only thing he said to me that wasn’t directly concerned with the job in hand was, “your cat, she hates me.” She really did.);
we got a new carpet on the stairs (painter recommended having removed the old one for painting, possibly for the best; in contradistinction to all other services the carpet people I asked for a quote from emailed and texted me to say they were coming and despite me saying that actually we had gone with someone else, I only finally managed to put them off on the day they were coming to install their carpet whether we wanted it or not);
we had the brass stair rods and fenders dipped (so shiny, would 100% do again);
we had a man come in November for a couple of days and clean up the garden front and back (already the weeds are re-sprouting sniffing the fresh January air);
we bought a huge new rug from the antiques man up the road and we put it in the dining room replacing my great aunt’s rug which was too small and had a number of holes from when my parents had it in front of the fire and errant coals had landed on it and once the cat pooed on it so it was not as lovely as it was in its heyday – it’s in our bedroom now, in case you were wondering what happened to it;
and finally a man came and rehung our pictures after the painting finished.
This last was possibly a bit indulgent but even though he judged our art collection (cheap prints, inherited daubs), he did a great job in hanging things. However, I wanted lots of smaller pictures over the sofa. (“A scatter hang,” said he, disapprovingly – he’s a big fan of giving art space but I like to stack things on top of each other like this, so there was a bit of creative tension). I envisaged something tasteful but I did not like it when he’d finished even though I loved everything else. “Sit with it,” he said. I have sat with it. I still don’t like it. I suppose I’ll have to redo it myself.
My father used to say “houses are nothing but trouble”. Was he wrong?
