Painting the study

Yesterday evening after supper, Richard suggested we paint the study. I was thinking of waiting until it got a bit cooler, but if he was in the mood to paint, then it seemed like a good idea to get on with it. We had decided to use the same colour as the living room (the palest version of 'warm apricot') since the study is a room directly off the living room, and we liked it, and we had some left over!

Then Tim suggested we watch another episode of 'Quantum Leap' (first season DVD), which I was given a while ago. That appealed considerably more than painting, so we did that.

Then at nine o'clock, Richard started talking about painting again. And got started. I expected to help - I even got changed into my painting clothes - but was much too tired. I'm just not a night owl. Sitting reading or talking is fine in the late evening, but painting is not. So I said I would do all the lower sections of the walls in the morning. Richard, who is much more awake in evenings, said he would do all the higher bits of the room. And did so. Not so easy when there's furniture in the room, of course, but since we weren't painting the ceiling we just moved it out of the way when necessary.

This morning I finished it, and when Richard got up we put everything back where it belongs. Then I found some pictures that seemed suitable, and at lunch-time Richard hung them.

It doesn't look a whole lot different since it was white before, and is now off-white. We had even put the curtains up a few weeks back. But it's distinctly cleaner-looking than it was and I like having pictures on the walls.

Study transformation in photos:

1. Here's how it was just after we moved in. Desk and computer in place and functioning, many wires in evidence, and other random objects which we thought might belong there in future:


2. A few days after we moved. A picture on the wall that didn't look right (and got moved downstairs) - on a convenient hook. Desk and computer still working, lots of wires showing, and piles of boxes waiting to be sorted:


3. The room feeling lived in, at the end of July. Curtains hung, computer working, useful bookcase with various clutter, sofa-bed moved to hide the wires. Only one box remaining on the floor to be unpacked. (Others are tidily away in closets):


4. Here it is this afternoon, after painting. The wall really doesn't look much different; the desk, sofa-bed and bookcase are all returned to their places. But a couple of my grandmother's paintings are now gracing the walls around the desk:


5. The other, previously unphotographed side of the room, where the box contains an ancient sewing machine and there's a radiator for the cold days. Here we've hung a pastel print of a fawn which we bought years ago when living temporarily in the USA, and shipped first to the UK, now here. I always liked it but it didn't go anywhere else, so I was pleased to find it looked exactly right in the study. On the other wall is the first tapestry picture I created, not as a child but a few years ago.