GNASHER NIGHTMARE

Confucius he say “It is easier to find a racecourse in West Sussex than it is to find an NHS dentist.”   Interestingly Google maps shows more dental practices in Chichester town centre than anything else.  Either the local residents eat too many sweeties or with the majority being elderly, it’s a Klondike gold fillings rush for dentists.  Yeehaa! 

Not that I’ve got anything wrong with my gnashers.  These pearly whites are good for a few more decades yet but when you get to my age it’s always beneficial to be registered with a practice in case of emergencies like when you decide to open beer bottles with your teeth and chip one of them. 

For impoverished riff raff like me this poses a bit of a problem because going to the dentist with toothache usually ends up costing more than a shopping splurge in Harrods unless you’re an NHS patient.  And judging from the email responses so far, it seems our local chopper flossers are all Harrods shoppers because most practices are private patients only. 

Unless you’ve got one of those Denplan policies, an initial visit to any one of these practices is £70 plus – cash which I could put to better uses round the house rather than spending it on expensive Oral B advice or a poke round the gums with an ice pick.  

The Chichester Observer recently observed the same thing and my heart went out to the woman who chose to pull out 9 of her own teeth rather than hand over the cost of a Disney holiday to a private dentist.  A bit of string and a hard shove on the door, job done! 

Still with Fontwell Park being just down the road next time I need an extraction, I’ll just give the horse vet a call as it’s probably cheaper than visiting one of these mentalist dentalists.

I use a water flosser on mine

FULL STEAM AHEAD

‘Your house was very small, with woodchip on the wall…’ sang Pulp.  And so is ours.  Getting stuck into ridding the walls of this dreadful woodchip paper.  It’s everywhere – on the walls, on the ceilings, it’s a miracle the toilet seat wasn’t papered in the stuff!

 

Ban woodchip now!

First to go under the stripping knife was the guest bedroom.  Being the smaller of the two upstairs bedrooms it didn’t take the pair of us too long to tame this beastie.  It’s full steam ahead to do battle with the wallpaper warlock. 

 

Small bedroom stripped

You can see where the wall was previously patched

Now being four foot nothing tall when I strip wallpaper it’s like Bilbo Baggins meets Changing Rooms but with only the bottom half of the wall getting tackled. The other half having the advantage of height strips everything over shoulder level.  This tag team approach works well as long as you both start in different corners so you’re not tripping up over each other.

 

Give your wall a jolly good soaking

Then get stuck in with the steamer

A word here on the safety of stripping with other people, it’s a steamy business.  Make sure you have plenty of ventilation in the room so you’re not overcome by the sauna-like conditions.  Remember steam is the product of very hot water and it hurts like hell when you get the odd drip on the hand (ouch!) and when you lean in close to the steam pad it’s like having a Karcher facial.  Have Government scientists considered wallpaper steamers as a means of Covid cleansing?  They could be quite effective in the war against germs.

As I’ve already mentioned, woodchip wallpaper is the stuff of the devil and a bugger to get off especially with several coats of paint on it.  Ban woodchip now!  I’m losing the will to live just looking at it.  Come on, just think how much better the walls are going to look without the stuff so stop whining and crack on.  

Get your kit together to save time – steamer, water jug or empty milk container for refilling, stripping knives, stepladder, scorer, wallpaper stripping liquid, bucket and portable radio tuned in to Planet Rock. 

 

Zinsser DIF the stuff of legends

Start by scoring the surface of the woodchip paper with a criss-cross network of lines.  This helps the steam penetrate the paper more effectively but don’t do this too deeply as you’ll mark the plaster underneath.  Dilute your wallpaper stripping liquid (Zinsser DIF) in a bucket and slosh it on the scored paper.  Leave for 15 mins to cook whilst you fill up the steamers then air guitar around the room to some headbanging rock tunes.  Hell yeah!  Repeat process at least 3 times. 

When steam’s up, you can now take out your angst on the walls.  Woodchip paper seems to strip in almost 2 parts; the upper paper layer and the bottom ‘granola’ layer.  Once you’ve peeled back the paper layer, the granola part requires only a gentle steam and little effort to remove. 

 

Add milk for instant breakfast

Be careful not to leave the steam pad on the paper for too long either as sometimes this can cause the plaster wall beneath it to crack especially if the plaster is not in a good condition or old like ours.  Good job we’re getting the walls re-plastered.  I’m beginning to see why they papered these rooms in the first place, there are so many cracks it’s only the wallpaper holding the whole house together.

This is what you find under the  paper

OVER THE RAINBOW

It was a funny old weekend weatherwise in Chichester, alternating between gale force squally rain, hailstones and sunshine.  A beautiful rainbow sprang up over the nearby rooftops brightening up the arduous task of wallpaper stripping. Rainbows always make you smile.

 

Rainbows always make you smile

I've yet to find the pot of gold

Reflections

Wonderfully vibrant colours

Steaming ahead in more ways than one, both bedrooms plus the dining room end of the lounge have been stripped to within an inch of their lives.  My bingo wings are looking the full house thanks to all this exercise. 

 

Supervising the workforce

The same cannot be said of the central heating system – it’s certainly not the full house or even a warm house.   The system is as antiquated as the neighbours and temperamental, working on an ‘as and when it feels like it’ basis so I’ve had to book in a visit from a plumber to see if he can make sense of it.  In the meantime, we’ve nothing but a tiny fan heater to huddle round and hoodies to snuggle into of an evening.  Bbbbrrrr!

Plumber’s been and gone taking £261 with him for fixing our heating issues which turned out to be a faulty valve.  I’m sure it won’t be the last time we’ll be seeing him. This is what you get when you buy old properties with old heating systems.  I expect ours probably got a mention in the Doomsday Book.

Antiques roadshow

FURNITURE'S HERE

At last a proper bed to sleep in!  Having spent the last few weeks dossing on a military grade camp bed, the arrival of our furniture is like Christmas come early.  

The removers made light work of unloading all our bits and bobs, cluttering up the lounge with what looked like the world’s largest Amazon order.  Our efforts being less efficient it then took hours to make sense of the cardboard chaos piled high all over the place.

 

Furniture has finally arrived

Never place cardboard boxes on top of dodgy looking electric hobs unless you want your perfect palace to look like chargrilled chicken.  What’s that smell?  It’s the pong of flame-grilled packaging slowly smouldering on a hot ring of fire.  This is what happens when you discover how easy it is to accidentally knock the control knobs into the ‘on’ position on an electric hob.  Whoopsie!

 

Electric hobs - a health & safety hazard

Luckily it didn't burn through to the contents

I like what you’ve done with the place.  Furniture has added a certain pazzazz to our freshly stripped,  post-apocalyptic looking rooms making them about as homely as a single cell at Alcatraz prison but at least there’s the prospect of a snuggly night’s sleep on a proper mattress.

Looking forward to a good night's sleep

Office/dining area

We can now sit and watch TV

Just in time to cook the Christmas dinner

WELCOME TO BIDDYVILLE

Well here we are.  Let me introduce you to the new neighbourhood.  Our hobbit hole is at the bottom of a cul-de-sac of nice little bungalows with manicured gardens and large driveways.  Unlike traditional street numbering, there are no odds or evens here.  Each house is numerically ordered beginning and ending where the cul-de-sac meets the main road.  It’s a small cul-de-sac and we’re in a bottom corner of the turning circle.

View from our front driveway of the cul-de-sac

We made a point of introducing ourselves to the neighbours (at a safe distance) most of whom are called Ann which makes it easy to remember who they all are as I’m useless with names.  (If in doubt, just shout Ann and hope for the best).  One of them described the place as ‘God’s Waiting Room’ and with most residents being over retirement age it’s not difficult to see why.  I guess that makes us young whippersnappers in comparison.  The local busybody neighbours tentatively asked if we were ‘party people’ and looked secretly relieved when we said no.  At this point I thought it polite not to mention my preference for satanic rock music especially as the neighbour attached to our semi is an ex-priest’s wife.  She could have me excommunicated!

Our new house is a dinky semi-detached chalet bungalow with a garage, driveway and front garden large enough to be converted into a second parking space which is certainly something to consider for the future.  It’s a cosy little place with 2 bedrooms upstairs, a lovely spacious lounge/diner, kitchen large enough for baking and manageable back garden that has scope for a bit of landscaping. A perfect little retirement home.

 

Front garden - possible extra driveway?

Front of house

The previous owners (now deceased) lived here for 46 years.  Not surprising as it’s very peaceful, conveniently located for town (20 min walk) and everyone we’ve met so far has been very nice.  I get a real sense of community which I guess will be a welcome change although being a bit of a Grinch getting in with the neighbours is not something that will come easy. 

All sounds perfectly idyllic so far but get this, the house basically needs gutting throughout.  Built around the late 50s/60s, it’s totally lacking in those character features you take for granted such as ornate skirting, architraves and old fireplaces.  The place is a woodchip temple.  Every room is papered in the stuff including the ceilings and everyone knows what a bugger it is to strip painted woodchip paper.  Ugh!

 

Main bedroom with camp beds

View of back garden from lounge patio doors

Lounge

Lounge/diner

The kitchen is the room I most want to take a sledgehammer to.  The floor is covered in a patterned lino you wouldn’t line a coffin in and I can’t wait to chisel off the hideous ceramic wall tiles.  I haven’t seen formica units like these since the 70s.  Definitely a rip out and start again job.

Retro kitchen - it's just got to go

Vintage formica units

Just look at those awful wall tiles

With matching hideous lino

There’s no doubt the DIY to do list will keep us going well into the next century so no shortage of blogging updates on how we’re going to transform the place from biddy bungalow to perfect palace. 

COUNTDOWN TO MOVING DAY

Can you hear it? What? Shussshhh! – it’s the sound of lockdown. I’m stood outside our new house, not a peep can be heard. It’s so quiet at the end of our cul-de-sac I can hear the grass grow. There’s no-one in sight, not a car parked out on the street, no spit roasting pigs in back gardens. Better get used to it as this is what living in Biddyville is going to be like from now on but more about that later. 

It’s been fourteen days since we finally completed on the sale of our house and collected the keys to our new little hobbit hole in Chichester. Hurrah! The countdown to moving day on the 16 November has now begun and whilst it’s been lovely staying in ‘The Badger Suite’ at my daughter’s house, you can’t beat having your own personal space in which to let your hair down. Home sweet home. 

So much has happened since my last post but I’m on an internet embargo as my new laptop sucks up bandwidth faster than I can scoff a bag of Skittles thus leaving everyone else’s gadgets beached high and dry on a wifi-less sandbar. Yep, thanks to Blogger pulling the rug out from Vista users’ feet, I’ve had to bite the hi-tech bullet and go all Windows 10 merely to keep this blog alive. Bah! 

Leaving Charminster was emotional. Moving is not as easy as just skipping off into the sunset. Aside from letting go of the physical asset there’s all the emotional baggage of the past 20 years to pack away too. I do miss my beautiful old house but I now have a lovely new little hobbit hole to turn into a palace and that’s going to keep me out of mischief until retirement. 

My life is now encased in cardboard, I can’t find a thing! There’s not a stick of furniture at the new house and horror of horrors there’s not even a phone line so no broadband. When the BT engineer turns up it’ll be like the second coming.