Painting and decorating.

In the corner of our dining room is an open fireplace where Marie used to have a fire and sometimes cook over the open fire.  Consequently, the surrounding bricks were blackened by soot and cooking.  There is also a brick arch which used to be the entrance to the bread oven which was in the bodega - now our kitchen.  When we bought the house we thought the oven took up a lot of valuable space so knocked it out.  It was over a metre square - if a domed oven can be a square - of floor space and although the room measures  3.5m by 4m, it seemed to take an awfully large chunk out.  Plus it was almost as high as me so maybe that's why it seemed a bit overwhelming.

For a long time, I've wanted to have a go at the blackened bricks and try to get them clean, also the wall above was black, and would look much nicer white like the rest of the room.  So part of this weeks decorating involved lots of elbow grease, scourers, hot soapy water, degreasing spray and muttering from me.  Not easy working in a corner, tucked in the side of the woodburner which we have put in the  open fireplace, in the heat of August.  Even though the dining room is one of the coolest rooms, I was dripping.

But at last the bricks are as good as new, the wall has been wire brushed back from black, sooty paint to just dirty paint and after 3 - or possibly more -  coats of paint,  is now gleaming like the rest of the room.  Table and sideboard freshly waxed and polished,  new pictures on the walls and we're ready.

At least decorating doesn't involve lots of complicated paint charts, carpet and wallpaper samples. The  tiled floors don't need covering,  we moved the furniture from one side, prepared the walls, painted, moved it back,  did the same with the other half  and cleaned  the floors afterwards.   Sounds quick, but it took 4 days as there are still all the other things to do here involving the vegetable plots, so it wasn't only decorating, all day every day.