I’m no stranger to the sensation of pushing my body to keeping going in the mountains – in fact, I quite like the feeling of seeing how far I can go and what I’m capable of. But since arriving back from the Alps, I’ve been pushing my body in a different way, which has felt considerably harder than expected – certainly harder than our recent mountaineering! Every wall surface and ceiling of The Cottage has needed painting since the renovations that we left behind in June. That turns out to be quite a big deal for someone who is not doing this sort of thing regularly.

It’s been around two weeks now of continuous dawn to dusk work. Interspersed with a couple of dips in the local river and an evening in the sea to maintain a level sanity. I’ve used (and maybe grown?) muscles I never knew existed and my back and arms have never ached so much – even from difficult rock climbing routes or long distance hikes with big backpacks! As well as the painting, we had to take off and trim doors to allow for new carpet clearance, re-design furniture and storage solutions (as in interior of the house is smaller than before, due to the internal insulation we’ve had fitted and the addition of new radiators) etc etc…

While I’ve painted plenty of walls in the past, they’ve generally been in empty houses before moving in, or one room at a time. Painting a whole house, that’s full of furniture, while trying to live in it has had it’s challenges and is considerably more difficult and time consuming.

The weather has been ‘helpful’ for such work and allowed us to keep much of the paint mixing and clutter outside – and it’s also meant that we could nip down to the river when we needed a break. We always came back refreshed and reenergised after diving in the cold waters, ready to get back to it!

We’re far from finished, as we’ve still new shelves to build the ‘unpacking’ of books and boxes to go, but yesterday, we reached a happy milestone, as we finally put the lid on the paint for the last time and packed away the brushes, tray and roller. And not a day too soon. I don’t think I could have taken much more!

Not only was the painting finished, the big deal came when Clare finished building a new wardrobe and we were able to move our clothes out of the back of the van – where they’ve been housed since May! It seemed a good cause for celebration, so we popped some champagne in the garden and gave ourselves an ‘evening off’! At least the next section of graft will work a few different muscles – I think I’ll stick to mountaineering where possible though!

The question is, can we get The Cottage unpacked and back in working order before our next travels begin at the end of the week?.. Back to the graft again for now…