£840 for a roll of paper?

HAVE you ever spent £840 on a roll of wallpaper? Come to think of it, have you ever spent £840 redecorating a room? Not, me. Over the forthcoming bank holiday – yes, thinking ahead – my children’s bedrooms will be given not just a lick of paint, but a complete makeover. And I can guarantee our budget is closer to £84 than the £30,000 that a certain Downing Street resident gets.

The only thing we agree on is not from John Lewis: that’s because I’m never knowingly overpriced.

Married man that I am, the only strippers I want to see are the ones that take the wallpaper off the wall.

And ancient man that I am, I’ve been there, done that and got the T-shirt – for decorating, that is.

There are lingering childhood memories of wrestling with the scraper, the smell of soggy wallpaper is still right up my nostrils while my fingertips bristle with the goo. It might be some *cough* 40-odd years ago, but that woodchip sticks around.

The satisfying moment was when all the peelings went into the black rubbish bags ready for the binmen to take away to the rubbish dump in the sky.

Thankfully, gone are the days when it would be elbow grease and hot water, it’s now possible to hire a top-notch gizmo that will take all the aggro out of the task, so it’ll be in situ from Saturday morning.

While Del Boy kept promising his family that this time next year they’ll be millionaires, my family are being promised that this time on Bank Holiday Monday we’ll be throwing up the lining paper.

Not fancy pants gold plated patterns on red paper that match the sofa for us, so the seats won’t be in their very own Where’s Wally? contest.

Nope, just some good old fashioned lining paper. Like that loo roll endorsed by puppies, it’s long and very strong, but thankfully not all that soft. In fact, it’s more like that tracing paper that sufficed when some of us were very, very young. It was an issue always raised at school council meetings as our young derrieres deserved some pampering. Well, something that wasn’t like razor blades at least. Some things weren’t better in the olden days.

Lining paper appeals as it’s also cheap, covers a magnitude of sins and leaves a literal blank canvas to play with.

I could, for example, get some red and gold paint and recreate that fancy pants wallpaper, all for a fraction of the cost. Wilkos has a can on offer at £6 right now, clearly it’s a colour and not 24 carats.

When it’s dry, Tuesday will be spent slap-dashing some paint on to the walls.

Paint is, as anyone knows, an interesting game. The colours rarely match the name.

One incarnation of my study saw the walls plastered in Custard Cream. No really. Sadly it looked nothing like the pale yellow of the finest biscuit known to mankind, instead it was more of a comfy orange, if there’s such a thing.

I’m sadly old enough to remember when white paint stopped being white paint. Instead it was white with a hint of red, white or blue.

Then it got given new names: James White, skimmed milk white, and salt. And yes, all of those are real.

Even that isn’t enough these days.

The whole vintage chic movement means that there’s an abundance of colours with weird monikers: salon drab, mole’s breath and dead salmon for example.

I’m a simple man, with simple tastes. Magnolia it is then.

As long as it’s all done before the carpets arrive on the Thursday, everything will be okay.

Well, until the children decide they want it all done again.