No, not our pudding, the ceiling! Artex, in fact. To be honest I think more plastic cream (the yummy sort you get in fake cream buns…. Did I just admit that I love plastic cream to the world?), or miracle whip. Now you may question why I would know what Artex is like before it becomes the awful bobbly ceiling, but I have my reasons.
We both hate Artex, we agreed it would go when we were thinking about what we would need to do (boy, did those plans change), however, we also have coving, which we intended to remove too. A while ago, when destroying the kitchen in those early demolition days, Ian started removing the coving, I say started, as it proved to be most keen to stay. In fact it took him half a day to remove a very small amount. It is not the flimsy plastic strip you find in DIY shops, oh no, this is real proper coving, heavy and totally bonded to the walls. In fact it is what is connecting the walls to the ceiling – there is nothing else holding those straw walls attached. That coving has absolutely no intention of leaving the property, even with our hefty crowbar and hammer, it is firm in its action. It is staying. We are pragmatists, OK we don’t like coving, but nearly killing ourselves (to be honest I can’t do it, Ian has to) to remove it is not sensible, so the coving stays. This does of course mean when we remove walls and doorways Ian now needs to replace and make beautiful joints of new coving – a job he loves… honestly!
What’s this all got to do with Artex though? Well, the coving has a very small lip at the top and bottom , so to skim the ceiling to get a flat one will totally fill this and it would look odd, in fact it may actually cover the top of the coving, so that probably isn’t possible either. We could of course remove the Artex, but we don’t know if it is the old asbestos based one or not, so we aren’t going there. The Artex has to stay, like it or not. If we want to actually move in we have to make some compromises, and this is the biggest we have made, but it’s the right one.
So now we have gaps in the Artex where we took the wall down, replaced the loft hatch and took a doorway out, so that needs fixing. It’s only a small area, so we get a pre made tub delivered, and this leads us to the conversation about Angel delight (butterscotch is our guilty pleasure), plastic cream (going to have to find a bakery soon!), and miracle whip. As Ian heads up the ladder to fill in the gap in the doorway we discuss its texture. Now, if you are a scholar of Artex (do such people exist?) you will know they are all different, the stipple, the pattern, the texture. We were hoping to blend it in…. but that doesn’t work, it looks really different. Our stipple is more, how can I put this? Close? Stippled? Whatever, it is different, I think it’ll be OK, nobody will know (I mean I wouldn’t tell anyone it was different…..), Ian the perfectionist says no, we are going to have to do the whole ceiling to cover the old stuff so it blends in…. The whole ceiling? That’s the hall, lounge and kitchen! So “we” do the hall, I say “we”, as my role it to helpfully point out the missing bit’s, as Ian twists his neck and arms into odd positions to get the stippling right and not brush the previously done bits with his hair! I definitely got the better job here!
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