I’m back at work after five days of cleaning, scrubbing, wallpapering, painting and general clearing out, in order to make our house in Manchester fit to sell. OK, so now’s not really the ideal time for selling property, but the tenants are out and we’d rather not have the hassle of getting some more in. Either way, we’d have to clean the place up to make it habitable so we set off on Tuesday with a car full of cleaning products and all the energy we could muster. My parents lent us some decorating ladders, dust sheets, paint trays, brushes and rollers but there was still a lot of get from B&Q, so we headed there before starting work. I forgot just how many interesting things they sell… and how the Trafford Park store is so big I need my driving glasses in order to read the aisle signs!
Top Tip: Sugar soap is definitely the best thing to use to clean dirty walls – it got the grease off the kitchen ceiling really easily and only a few nasty bits of wall required scrubbing. Took a while to clean everything, although we found some wipes in B&Q that got off most of the marker pen (don’t ask!) but, after patching up the missing bits of oh-so-stylish woodchip wallpaper, we started painting on Thursday and had got quite a bit done by the time we went out to meet up with friends for food, drinks and a well-deserved break. If you’re ever in Chorlton, check out Croma for delicious pizza and Oddest for a really wonderful place to drink. They also do a really great breakfast too… the hangover burger is a truly tasty bargain.
Ours isn’t a small house, as buildings from the late 19th century do generally have much larger rooms than more recent properties, but we managed to give at least two coarts of paint to the downstairs hallway, the living room, the kitchen, the master bedroom, the third bedroom, and part of the second bedroom (just did the worst wall of that as there wasn’t time to do it all). Will have to go back one weekend to sort the rest out and get an estate agent round. Won’t be too much of a chore now the place is looking better, and we can have lunch at Lily’s and takeaway from the awesome place just down the road. Thankfully I’ve forgotten its name so I can’t be tempted from afar. Suffice to say, best onion bhajis ever. Mmm… I’m hungry again now.
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