Loft Decorating, Episode 6

I have ended today with sore knees, a sore thumb, an aching back, sore throat and a soul-full of satisfaction. Let's find out how/why this might be...

Well the sore throat is from singing. Had the radio on and was singing along way too enthusiastically. So that's one injury accounted for.

So aside from singing along to 20 year old music, I was also trying to finish off the small loft bedroom. We last saw it with a naked floor and a wall that needed edges painting.

First step should probably have been finishing the painting, but this is me so I went with putting the underlay down instead.

According to the internet, I'm supposed to put the sheets of underlay at right angles to the way the floorboards run. That was going to cause a lot of wastage and I don't really have floorboards (in the traditional sense). So I figured I'd get away with putting the underlay down whichever way was convenient. The door was taken off the doorframe and I got to work.

Underlay went down nicely. Just had to make sure it was tight against the grippers and stapled down well. Only needed to cut two lengths. Am running out of vintage staples so I'll have to buy some new ones (though I may put them in the old box so that the antique aesthetic isn't ruined).

It was at this point that I thought I ought to finish the painting on the feature wall. So I did.

Though I was cutting it fine with the amount of paint I bought...

I also went over some of my previous roller-based mishaps with some white paint.

Next up was the carpet itself and the first challenge was getting it in the room to start with. This entailed more hanging things out of the window. I came close to bashing the neighbour's roof but just managed to avoid it.

The next stage took a lot of effort. I had to somehow unroll the carpet, which was too big for the room, and get it into a rough position ready for trimming.

I thought the carpet would slide far more than it did. So getting it to move at all was a mission. At one point I was underneath the carpet trying to move it. I know it has a Tog rating, but I don't recommend using it as a duvet!

After a lot of pulling, pushing, swearing and bunny-hopping I got it close enough. It touched all the walls. It was slightly off square, but there's no pattern so it wasn't important.

I did a quick trim to make stretching the carpet more manageable. Then I went round with the carpet kicker contraption to hook the carpet onto the grippers and stretch it out. This worked way better than I expected. As if by magic, all the wrinkles had gone.

So in the YouTube video I was watching, they then trimmed the carpet to exact size by folding the edges over and cutting the carpet 8mm from the skirting board. I tried this but while it was very quick, I couldn't get it to work. I had far too much left over and it wouldn't tuck out the way...

So having tried that, I went back to the slower but more precise way that Dad showed me the other week. Which involves slowly working along the wall like this...

I found this to be painfully slow and despite having a scraper to protect the skirting board against scratches, I still managed to damage the skirting board.

So I ended up using a hybrid of the two techniques. I'd use Dad's technique to make regular cuts every 15cm, then fold the carpet back and cut through the back of the carpet to join the cuts. This worked very well.

So that was that. Just worked my way around the room. Cutting around the door frame was a faff but got there eventually. I need to get a transition strip for under the door so it's just stapled in place for now.

The door got put back on it's hinges but it wouldn't shut all the way. So still a little work to do but the room's now ready for furniture at least! 

I don't know if I'll get to do anything tomorrow as I'm off to a birthday gathering. Nevertheless, I found myself ending the day feeling relief that another chunk of this gargantuan project is (virtually) complete, and feeling pride that the carpet doesn't look bad at all either.