Floor plans...

...are my new bestest friends.

Now these aren't as amazing and all-singing-all-dancing as I would like them to be. In fact, they're not properly to scale in any way, shape, or form. But they're working, so that will do for now.

Living room before.

Living room afterwards (eventually)

(the radiator isn't new, it was just hidden behind the sofa and not heating the room at all, the sofa will now be in front of the fireplace we never use)

Now the scale is so very off because our living room is nowhere near that wide. But I sketched out its previous layout onto graph paper and gave everything approximate sizes. Then we measured the important bits.

Then I just made sure that everything that needed to be on the second plan was the same size as on the first one.

The sofa is not going to be flat against the wall, but coming out from it slightly at the right hand side, probably slightly in front of that bookcase. The left hand chair will be a lot tighter in against the bookcase there, and the right hand chair will end up somewhere near that position but it really depends on where it looks best!

My main plan isn't actually for furniture.

It's for the books. (but you guessed that)

Before, the bottom left bookcase had Pratchett on the top three shelves, then some cookery and craft books, then craft boxes. A real mix of stuff that mostly ended up there because that was the easiest one to change about.

Now I'm planning to move the Pratchett books to one of the bookcases on the right, and to fill the rest of it with the non-Discworld Pratchett (that had been on the other side of the room) and other fantasy fiction.

Instead of three different bookcases all having non-fiction on, I'm going to group it all together. Depending on where I'm most likely to sit to sew, the boxes of sewing stuff will be on the closest bookcase. The two bookcases on the top right will be filled with fiction books, and the bottom three or four shelves will all be double packed with paperbacks.

I know how I want it, kinda. But it really will take the actual moving things in for me be to be able to get it right.

I may be messy...

...but I'm not disorganised. Yes, 99% of the time the computer desk will have piles of paper all round the keyboard, but 99% of that time I can find exactly what I'm looking for (the 1% being if Anthony has been hurling stuff around).

But at the moment I am both messy and disorganised. I hate it. It makes me itch.

There'd been a strange lumpy bit in our living room floor for a very long time. It wasn't a major problem, we just stuck a chair over it. But then one day I moved the chair and realised that the lumpiness had spread to the wall...

So when Anthony's folks came round the following Sunday bringing a builder with them to look at fixing up the utility room to make it more weatherproof and secure, we got him to have a look at the floor instead.

Turns out that the heating pipes that run the length of that wall had been bodged together by the previous owner, and so one of the joints had been very very slowly leaking.

Just a case of patching that bit of floor and wall, yes?
No.
The area where the pipe had leaked was also where the bodger had pulled up the old hearth area, so none of that area was any good.

So a case of patching the hearth area of floor?
No.
The way the rest of the floor surface was breaking up made the builder suggest that we needed the whole sub-floor ripping up and a new concrete floor laid.

Since this was two weeks before Christmas, and the weekend before my 12 week scan, I was hoping for "we'll get rid of all the loose stuff, then do it properly after Christmas."

Not my decision to make apparently. (Not Anthony's either)

So the work actually started on the day of my 12 week scan. A week and a half's worth of no heating, lots of dust and noise, just when I'd started to be less stressed.

They did the floor in three sections in the end.

Each section was done about three days apart, to allow for the concrete to go off enough so that they could then use that surface when working on the next chunk.

For most of the time I got to keep a couple of bookcases in there. The rest are all out in the conservatory. I get extra itchy when I can't get at my books.

The next decision taken was to get the room redecorated while it was empty. A quote was obtained and a decision taken. (again, not by either of us)

Which is why I spent the week I was supposed to be on holiday with Anthony, staying with my mother while he and his dad decorated.

To be continued...

Tuesday's...

...To Do List
(red items are uncompleted)

• Clear off dining room table and polish


• Empty bins


• Empty cat litter trays


• Put black bags into wheelie-bin


• Descale kettle


• Sort bottles for recycling/Paul


• Take down Christmas/Birthday cards


• Change Ecological Wall Calendar to Winter/Spring


• Update Books Read in 2009 list


• Listen to some classical music (in an attempt to be able to name all the pieces I know by ear eg. Pachelbel's Canon or 'Pizzicata' from Sylvia)


• Play some Warcraft


• Watch some things from the V+ box (cos it's filling up!)


• Spend some time fussing the pussycats


• Work on my cross-stitch


• Do washing-up

Quite a productive day really...shame about the washing up though...just ran out of time...*whistles innocently*