The Living Room Ceiling Saga

My parents are prolific redecorators. As a child, I don't think I can think of any period of more than about 6 weeks during which there was no form of redecorating/rearranging/building going on. In fact, on the day I was born, my dad took my mum to the hospital, came home and took the roof off the house. We had to live with my granny till I was 6 months old.

Now the fact that my parents now own 2 houses (theirs and mine) is of course a cause for joyous wallpapering and painting at every opportunity (that my dad is a painter and decorator helps with keeping costs down). So as I said in the previous post, having completed most of my house (and most of theirs), we have come full circle and are starting at the beginning: namely, my study.

So Papa Smile came up last night and papered the study, and very nice it is too. Then he painted some ceilings, which was also nice. I was out (for safekeeping) while this happened, and came home expecting to find the entire house redone in white emulsion (it wouldn't have been the first time he got carried away with a paintbrush and an empty house), but was pleasantly surprised to find that all was looking fresh and lovely.

But then we came to the living room ceiling, which was damaged in one of the 'leaky bath' incidents about this time last year. I can't remember whether I mentioned this or not; compared with what else was going on around then, I may not have felt that water pouring through the living room ceiling was worthy of note (I distinctly remember when I noticed the flood at first, just kind of thinking, "aw, stuff it", sticking a bucket underneath and leaving the house). Anyway, there had been water pouring through, which warped the plasterboard and made the paper fall off.

So last night Papa decided to stick the paper back on; this did not work, so he decided to cut it off instead (it was still attached, just hanging off). Then we realised that the plasterboard was really quite warped, and maybe it should be fixed before the paper went on. So Papa decided to remove the old plasterboard, with a hammer.

I need not tell you that it ended badly.