All change!

We've had a very busy three months: storing and selling furniture for friends of ours who don't live in Bath but who had a housefull of goodies to be disposed of here.  Then all change in our house - new ensuite bathroom and other works, and finally the decorating of my mother's empty home. Each situation required the moving of cupboards, cabinets, tables and sofas. With a bad back like mine I've had to rely on the menfolk to manoevre the heavy items. I can't lift or shift!

One remarkable day in February saw some lovely people from Scandinavia trudging through the six-inch snow to retrieve a dainty chest of drawers from the garage. We had stored our friends' furniture there. They were very pleased with it, paid cash and were clearly not put off by the wintry weather. The little chest now resides in their home in Corsham, just across the Wiltshire border from us in Bath.

Our master bedroom, ensuite kitchen and ensuite bathroom have been completely cleared. The former has been decorated and the latter has been refitted with a new shower, washbasin, toilet and non-slip floor. It will be adorned by a new shower door, duckboard, thick white bath sheets and a square non-slip mat for the shower tray. So a lot of work has been carried out there. The mini kitchen hasn't been upgraded but is now home to a clothes rail and is storage for archived documents, photographs, diaries, newspaper clippings and so on. More a walk-in wardrobe than a mini kitchen.

It's taken a lot of effort to sell £300 worth of furnishings from our garage - which is now empty - and to upgrade our master bedroom. But it's done!

Last weekend we began another huge task: the decorating of my mother's house. It has been empty for five - yes five - years. After all mum's furnishings had been removed I thought each room would look dowdy, dismal, drab and forlorn. But not so. Apart from the conservatory - which needs work - and an ancient carpet in one of the bedrooms, the house looked remarkably good. Our childhood home has been lifted by the installation of a new garage door, a brand new, completely virgin kitchen and a brand new shower and bathroom.

Thus far we have managed to decorate two rooms downstairs, one needs its ceiling painted and its skirting boards doing. Another merely (merely!) requires skirtings to be glossed. Bedroom doors are more or less finished and one bedroom has already had its walls and ceiling completed redecorated. This weekend we will paint the other bedrooms, complete the paintwork in the hall and on the landing. Then we start on the front door and porch. Thankfully builders have decorated the stairwell, hall and landing in white emulsion. However that has left the skirting boards looking drab.

We will do what we can do.

Then we will dress the rooms with a painting, a plant, an occasional table or some such.
And our old home may be ready to hand on to another family.

It will be the end of the MacPhersons, my family, in Nightingale Place. Such a pretty address but no longer ours. Time to move out and move on.

Will all our work be enough to attract a potential purchaser?