Actually, the grass is not always greener on the other side because one of our neighbour’s dogs poos freely in their garden so they have giant dead patches of grass. A good reason to get higher fences. But that’s another story.

Barry has had a plan for some time of having decking in the garden. By plan, I don’t mean some vague concept of “we need to do something to the garden”; I mean plan. He’s drawn it out on graph paper so many times I’m surprised he can’t recite our garden’s exact dimensions. I was reluctant to consider decking at first. I’ve seen some examples and it can look very cheap, and it also requires some upkeep (a dirty word in our house), so I didn’t think much to it.

However! My ex-uncle (for an explanation, please see the post where we broke his sander) has lovely decking, which he put in himself and I really like, possibly because he’s stained it dark and surrounded it in pretty flowers.

And yea, I was converted to deckingism.

And yea, I had to google the word “yea” to make sure I was spelling it correctly. It looks a bit too much like “yeah”.

Regardless, let me give you, ahem, the lay of the land of our garden. Our garden slopes towards the back right hand corner. It slopes down to the right, and down to the far end. The patch of land most likely to get any sun at all is the back right corner, which is also where we very cleverly placed our shed. We used to have a rabbit, so there’s a big square patch of dead grass where the hutch was, and I hate the paving stones, which I’d call a “prison” grey. Hence the plan.

I’m not even sure this will get done this year after all the interior fun with the kitchen and living room, but I can tell you what we’re thinking. We’re imagining decking down the right hand side of the garden, and we’ll have to have two or three separate areas (with steps between them), otherwise we’ll end up about five feet above the ground by the end of the garden. Barry’s got visions of firepits and barbecues dancing in his head, but one step at a time, hey?

Updates on Saturday’s activities – it’s (as you can tell by the picture) been snowing, so we’re really in dire need of a radiator now! We’re being quite indecisive about which one to get, so I think some snappy decision-making’s in order. We nipped to Wickes to get some tester paints (not long and we’ll have the complete range) for the kitchen. After Karen commented about brilliant white not being so brilliant for walls, I’ve been wittering on about maybe a pale grey for the kitchen too, but Barry’s having none of it. In retaliation, I’ve painted two different greys on the wall (and in the corner, thanks Karen!) and I’m hoping he’ll come around. God forbid we have to paint it twice.

I’ve also finally finished painting the living room walls, as shown. There are still doors and skirting boards to do, but they’re going to wait until the kitchen’s finished. Meanwhile, Barry was fitting some of the plasterboard we took down into the gaps in the walls, which should hopefully make it a bit warmer as well.

He’s also plugging up the fan that went from the loo to the outside world, but the expanding foam went a bit wrong and it looks like it’s been really ill.

Our dining room table’s currently in pieces, and we’ve moved all of the chairs up to a spare room so they’re out of the way for when the kitchen comes (a week and a half, people!). It does, however, look to the casual observer that we’re ready to play musical chairs at a moment’s notice.