See, *this* is why my house isn't Finished...

Anyone who knows me will be able, no doubt with a roll of their eyes, to attest to the fact that I am inclined to be wildly distractable. I'm also inclined to over-think things. I think (har har) this is why I'm an absolute terror for taking too many things on at once, and nowhere is this more evident than on the home front. The only room that actually looks finished in our gaff is the sitting room, and even it isn't *quite* there yet. There are pictures and photos to be hung over the couch. The room could probably do with a mirror over the mantlepiece. Two of the speakers of Himself's surround sound yoke have yet to be mounted on the walls. There is a certain (possibly sideboard shaped) je ne sais quoi missing from the alcove to the left of the fireplace.

And that's the room that's closest to being done! I won't get into the nearly-there kitchen units, half-painted kitchen walls, or still-to-be-wallpapered wall in the dining room. Let's not mention the stairs which needs at least one more coat of paint to finally take it from pine to pristine white, or the guest bedroom that was painted a gorgeous Farrow & Ball grey and got a purple acrylic chandelier but is now filled with a dressed mattress spare bed and piles of clothes and mounds of what can really only be described as detritus.

Have we just moved in, you wonder? How long are we living there? Oh, just over 2 years...

As ever, though, I have a plan. Himself and I will both tackle the stairs some weekend (unheard of - usually I like to do these decorating things myself to make sure they're done right) so that it's ready to take a runner - when we do eventually find one we can agree on. That's job Numero Uno, since it's the first thing people see when they come in the front door.

Speaking of which, must finish painting the inside of the front door.

Himself will then be charged with putting up those bloody speakers (power tools job, lots of noise and dust - right up his street) while I finally finish the kitchen presses. This was the first job I tackled when we moved in so it's absolutely shameful that it's still ongoing. Althouuugh... excellent daylight is really a prerequisite for tackling the painting of the doors and surrounds as well as the actual kitchen walls, so winter is maybe not the greatest time to be getting gung-ho about finishing the project for someone who's after perfect results. Might pop that on the back burner until the weather picks up.

The spare bedroom can't really be sorted out much until we get a not-just-a-mattress-on-the-floor bed in there, which won't be happening until we get a new bed for our own bedroom and shunt the old one into the spare room. However, I have yet to find a bed that I like and until that happens, progress upstairs will continue to move at a slower pace than would generally be desirable.

The worst thing is, I don't even want a fancy bed for our room!!! I basically just want a cheap, not too high, off-the-floor box (divans give me the creeps) with no headboard whose legs you can't see or else are a bit ornate. To that I'm planning to add an upholstered mid-height square headboard of my own creation. This is harder to find than you'd imagine: most platform beds either come complete with an integral headboard or extend stupidly beyond the width and length of the matress, at exactly the right height to cut the shins off me. (Seriously, I could be in an aircraft hangar usually used to house C-5s with a small desk in the centre, and I would still manage to walk full tilt into the bloody thing.)

IKEA's Vanvik (paired here with The World's Most Hideous bedclothes, ick) looked like a runner for a while. A fully upholstered frame, it had nice wee decorative legs, the sides of the base didn't extend beyond the mattress, I reckoned that It wouldn't be difficult to fashion alternative covers in my own choice of fabric. It looked better In Real Life than in the catalogue. And if I happened to run in to it, sure the thing was padded so I'd be grand. Result! Well, nearly - the bowed headboard means that it's something insane like 400 foot long which would look ridiculous in our not-actually-all-that-big room. I haven't crossed it off the list completely: I have a hare-brained scheme involving hacking a bit off the headboard and re-doing it in the back of my mind, and while it's unlikely to ever come to fruition I just can't shake the idea entirely.

Well, it's either that or start building a bed completely from scratch, and frankly I'm not sure either of our carpentry skills are really up to it... just don't tell Himself!