Manic Weekend!

Evening,

I wanted to post yesterday but life got in the way :)

I came home on Saturday morning to help decorate my brothers bedroom as a surprise for his 17th birthday. He's currently in Canada for the next week with school, and has no idea it's being done. The old Manchester United stuff has been binned, and the new stuff is coming in!

Mam first mentioned it when I asked what she'd like for her birthday two weeks ago. She replied that she didn't want anything, but it would be a big help if I could do the painting for Daniels room if they decided to do it. Based on this I assumed that I'd be spending Saturday afternoon painting!

Nope.

I got off the train and went straight up to see my Grandparents to collect Mam who was looking after Gu (she needs a carer). Neither Dadcu or Mam could decide quite how the wood of the new furniture they'd bought on Thursday looked, so Dadcu and I went to the furniture store to see it. They both remembered it as being quite dark, almost black.

Does this look almost black to you?!

(The dresser, not the chest of drawers!!)

This is the floor in his room at the moment. We were trying to match it which proved a little difficult. We figured with a red tinge (the furniture is rubber wood that has then been treated and originally looks more like pine) that a dark floor and white walls would go well.

Once we got to B&Q we decided that the walnut was the best as the mahogany would have too much red in it. Except that the mahogany has been discontinued. That's pretty much where Saturday ended.

This morning we went looking again. We eventually found a shop with the 2.5 ltr tub of varnish in stock, but he sticker for dark oak was lighter than the medium oak! So we befriended a man in Focus who made a deal with us: We could have the 2.5 ltr tub of dark oak (which was £47.99!!!) and take it home with us and test a patch. If it wasn't what we wanted we could refund it, even though we'd opened and used it. That was really kind of them, so that's what we did.

We decided that it should be okay, and tbh Mam and I were not really in the mood for any more driving! Instead we emptied and sorted through everything in the room. We hoovered and washed the floor. Then I got rid of all the blu tac off the walls, and we tackled these things while waiting for the varnish to dry:

The theme used to be football, so there are a lot of football stickers on the wall! Or used to be :)

Unfortunately taking off those pulled some of the paint off. Bit annoying but no big worry.

My foot and my painting jeans :) It's been quite hard getting my camera to pick up an accurate colour, quite frustrating.

Once the varnish was properly dry, we then started re-arranging everything so that we could clear half the room to start varnishing the floor.

We took a break to top up on some liquids! (The rose was mine :) )

And then it was time to varnish! The tub came with it's own pad-on-a-pole that we used.

It came out a lot darker using that. We did the patch using a brush because if we'd used the pad and the colour hadn't been right, there's no way we would have been able to refund it.

By this time it was 6pm and I had to leave to go and look after Gu while Dadcu went to Choir practise. Mam finished off the half, and when I came back it looks like this:

Dark oak did indeed turn out to be dark in the end!

xx