Newsletters

News from Mr Grady

Hello Everyone,

Well, it was fabulous over the Easter Break to see the sun really starting to shine, however cold it may have been.  I hope the holiday gave a chance for a refresh and a recharge – it did at least feel like the first holiday that we’ve had where we weren’t necessarily worried about a major shift in approach or an announcement that fundamentally changed what we were doing, and that in itself was positive.

I had one of those breaks where I was busy at home with jobs and chores, but they were pleasant ones that I could potter away at, without a deadline, or any level of accountability other than my wife’s approval (or not) of my DIY efforts.

One of my tasks was wallpapering a single wall that had two small alcoves either side of a chimney breast.  It was not a patterned wallpaper, as I have fallen out with that sort of thing before, and to be honest, was a little trepidatious of undertaking the task myself – what If I got it wrong?  What if the paper wouldn’t stick, I have wallpapered before, but it was a long time ago, what If I couldn’t remember the basics?  It also required more maths than I had first thought. 

There was the square footage of the wall; there was the number of rolls to cover that, and there was the roll-to-paste ratio to be considered.  However, due to the fact that some of the corners were very tricky, I had also decided not just to start in the middle of the wall and work outwards, but to hide some nasty cutting in down the corners that would not be seen.  This meant I actually needed more “drops” to hang on the wall than I’d first calculated.  “That’s ok,” I thought, I had built in at least one whole drop contingency in my calculations.

What I hadn’t built in was my apparent inability to read a tape measure correctly.  Measuring the height of the wall for the first drop as 205cm when in fact it was 215cm.  I discovered this, having cut the strip, pasted it, and stuck it to the wall at the top, only to run my brush down the sheet and discover a small, but significant 10cm shortfall of paper, and a bare plaster wall.  This was an entire strip wasted and ate into my contingency even further. 

It was a nervous hour and half of hanging correctly measured strips, as I worked my way through the rolls to see if I was going to have to do some sort of patching job.  I made it, with 2 feet of spare paper. 

What was enjoyable was the remembering of skills I had forgotten I had – how to cut the paper in round plug sockets for example – the best way to use the Stanley knife and scissors in the corners, and at the ceiling and the floor.  Sometimes we can forget the skills and knowledge we have acquired along the way, and can be faced with the nervousness of trying something new – or doing something we previously were good at, but haven’t done for a while.  As we move through the next term, we’ll all be faced with those things as the world opens up (hopefully) and as things we may not have done for a while, or indeed forgotten we knew about are back on our agendas.  Embrace it, as it’s all tucked away in there somewhere, and the unfamiliar will feel familiar again faster than you think.

In other news, the saw is working very well, and I still have all ten fingers in full working order.

With very best wishes,
Mr Grady