Stripping

I ache everywhere tonight. I've been wincing for the last week or so with sciatic pain in my lower back that alternates with just an uncomfortable lumbar ache, but after a productive day today I'm wondering whether I'll be able to walk tomorrow! Finally we are starting to see results in the lounge - just as well, considering the decorator starts on Monday!

Here's a photo of Colin proving that he can turn his hand to most things, doing his plastering. I am still so impressed at what a good job he's made of it. Not so pleased about the fact that he has more than likely ruined three good pairs of jeans though!

Anyway, today myself and the boys tackled the last of the wallpaper stripping - one whole wall, which had been hidden behind our big TV unit/shelves/cupboard affair. My hands are stiff and sore from where I've been gripping the wallpaper scraper, but it's a nice soreness, borne of activity and getting things done! Believe me, painted woodchip is not easy to get off the wall. At least it's done now - all that's left to do tomorrow is the last tiny bit under the window, try and get some more of the rubble/dirt/dust off the carpet, and move all the furniture into the middle of the room so that Colin can get the radiator off the wall - we're moving it to underneath the window, except we'll need to buy a narrower one as the one we have currently is too tall to fit under the window.

After all that activity, I persevered and cleaned the bathroom to within an inch of its life - woe betide any of the boys if they make any sort of mess between now and Monday night! Then I've sat and listed almost 30 more items on Ebay.

Before I discovered digiscrapping, I used to own a paper scrapping supplies website. I shut it down 18 months or so ago. Actually, to be honest I didn't even shut it down. I just walked away from it when I got to the end of my ability to cope with working all day at my day job and then coming home and working sometimes until 3.00 or 4.00 am packing orders etc. Colin couldn't help me, and so I just stopped when I'd got to the point where I felt I couldn't take it any more. It didn't help that at the time in the UK paperscrapping world there were multiple customers who felt it was their bound duty to not only receive their stash at the cheapest possible prices, but that they should get free postage too. Fortunately for me, my little stock room is up at the top of the house (we have a three storey house), so I didn't have to deal with it, I just conveniently 'forgot' that it was up there because I couldn't even deal with walking into the room and seeing it all there.

Colin has been nagging me for aeons to get the stuff sorted out and sold off, and finally I've felt more able to cope with it. Walking into the room now I feel sort of detached from it all, like it all belonged to someone else. Handling everything again has been interesting, sort of like I want to keep it all, but not really. Trying to sort everything out has made me see that although I could have handled things better at the time (if I'd had any sense I'd have put everything on a huge sale and sold it all off and shut down the shop properly), I did what I felt was the only thing I could do. Because there is just so much to sell off, we're sort of toying with the idea of a very limited website (to save paying Ebay listing fees on so much stuff) ... the thought is sort of exciting, but scary. I don't ever want to be a scrapping shop owner again. I have been looking at some of the websites around today, and things have moved on so drastically that I realise that I couldn't have sustained it anyway, there's just far too much choice out there and as it is we are in debt up to our eyeballs (I give Colin credit, he let me run with my dream even though it's left us in the shit financially - but it IS only money after all). So it was obviously the right thing to do.

Anyway, I have loads of stuff up on Ebay (and loads more still to come). All of it no newer than about 18 months old (in fact, the last big load of stash I bought in was all the new Prima flowers, you know the ones I mean - the velvet ones, etc). So if you're up for a bargain look us up - our username on there is Colinsbm.

So, a busy day in several ways, but I do at least feel like I am finally facing up to things and getting things sorted out. That's got to be good, right?