What Katie did next... As usual, my plans for luxury have been pulled up short by the reality of my bank account
Blossoming mould spells financial disaster – but at least there’s a ‘Workaway’ to help out
It’s a joy having a Workaway at the house – especially since T, a German woman in her fifties, seems to love doing the washing-up. Having sheepishly offered her my caravan to stay in, I’m relieved she seems delighted with it. Together we hang bunting out on the trees, I fill the van with bright yellow daffodils and she adds wafting incense. And I feel another part of the house spark into life.
Over coffee in the morning we discuss the retreats T used to run. We spend evenings by the fire, sharing stories about our travels. I admire her for being such a free spirit, albeit one with her feet firmly on the ground. I’m envious that’s she’s more adventurous than me – and far neater at painting. She requests masking tape and slim brushes, then quickly sets about painting my bathroom with stereotypically Germanic efficiency. Meanwhile, I get back to smashing things up.
Slowly, I’ve been assembling a freestanding cottage kitchen from pieces I’ve collected from eBay, Facebook Marketplace and charity shops. I take the large pine dresser that I found for £50 and “upcycle” it, adding chintzy nobs, cramming it with bright china collected on my various travels: a gold teapot from Devizes; a Chairman Mao mug bought at the Great Wall of China; a floral plate with “Homo Sweet Homo” written on in calligraphy; a Jeremy Corbyn mug found at the dump.
I buy chalky-pink furniture paint and start dabbing it over the dark wooden sideboard that I picked up for free. I feel a little guilty at first to be painting over the beautiful mahogany, but the new smart grey-pink eggshell coat makes the carvings on the wood sharpen into focus, revealing delicate roses and climbing leaves.
At Frome Reclamation Yard, I find a beautiful, wide porcelain butler sink, which weighs about 30 stone. Martin and I lug it back to the house, heaving it on to a sideboard where I get a plumber to plumb it in along with a brushed gold mixer tap. “It sounds like Scrapheap Challenge,” one friend rudely says when I describe my new kitchen sink. But
actually I think it looks rather beautiful, alongside the bright dresser and my fat cream SMEG fridge. Next, I have plans to paint the whole kitchen a soft blush pink, so even if now the room does resemble a scrapheap, eventually it will become the pretty pink cottage kitchen I have always dreamed of. With T, the Workaway, now helping me decorate, rooms are slowly coming together, and I start feeling more on top of the house. This means that I have time again to start dreaming up ridiculous new plans.
I play around with my dream kitchen – stringing curtains over cabinets, buying brass shelf brackets and offcuts of wood, Googling patterns of toile du jour to hang under the sink.
I investigate wood-burning cookers, imagining myself sat beside one at my farmhouse kitchen table, warmed by the fire, alternating between chucking logs on the stove and boiling soup on the top. Initially installing a new logburner had seemed decadent, but now, given the rocketing price of oil, it almost seems economical.
I start making plans to spend summer driving through France stopping to shop at the “vide-grenier” Saturday markets (which literally translates as “empty loft”) picking up bits and baubles for the house. I have fantasies about pulling up in my drive after summer with a tan and a car stuffed with gilt tat.
My interior design ideas for the cottage become ever more ambitious. Martin has come up with a plan to distract from the hideous green carpet in the bedroom, which I hate, by accentuating it. “Think emerald sofas and peace lillies,” he suggests. I am less subtle. And have less taste. I order samples of jungle wallpapers, which arrive in the post assaulting me with yards of green palms and dark leaves. My favourite is a jungle pattern with tigers hiding among the trees, which reminds me of taking a day out at Longleat with F and her daughter. Still, once I calculate the price of buying enough wallpaper to cover the room, I’m in shock.
I have a similar wake-up call with the carpets. Having ventured to the local carpet shop, where everyone speaks in a monotone, to discover a new world of shag, pile and luxury vinyl flooring, as you’re supposed to call it now, I baulk when I hear the price.
As usual, my luxurious plans are pulled up short by the reality of how much I have in the bank. It has also become worryingly apparent that I may be approaching everything the wrong way around.
After the recent storms, problems have begun revealing themselves in the house, which until now I hadn’t known
I’m lining my dresser with china: a gold teapot from Devizes, a Jeremy Corbyn mug from the dump
existed. Now in corners of rooms I have painted, the emulsion is bubbling up where the wall beneath is damp.
In one bedroom, a patch of black mould has begun blossoming through the wall at ceiling height. In another room, frustratingly, the bedroom so perfectly painted by my aunty and her wife, the plaster is aching beside a wet patch. It appeared overnight – a dark blue streak across the fresh pale-teal paint. It is clear there are far more urgent things to attend to in the cottage than buying toile.
Now I don’t have time to think about frou-frou because I am too busy rereading my survey and, having established my problems seem to stem from the roofline, taking a crash course in learning about soffits and fascias. The next day, I call two roofers to quote for renovating my roofline. One tells me it will cost £8,500; the other, £3,200.
My decorating dreams seem to be going up in flames along with my savings. Still, it isn’t all bleak. There is T, carefully flicking her brushes, painting my bathroom a beautiful pink.