The Makeover is Almost Complete... or... The Empress is Just About Over It... or... Can We Get Back to Normal Now?

Hello Dhaaarlings...

It has been a while..

Things have been slightly hectic round The Palais of late...

New carpet has finally been laid in the hallway and lounge which means that the renovations have almost concluded... I say almost as there remains some wall tiling to do in the laundry area and then the celebratory festivities can finally commence.... It seems that things have been dragging on all year... well not seems... they Have been dragging on... but the end is in sight...

The carpet laying was not without drama and became a Saga in itself.

On the day it was due to be laid we had a phonecall from the company saying that they couldn't go ahead as planned as the person laying the carpet refused the job... something about old stock and poor quality... did us a favour by walking out on the job really. 

I cancelled the order and went to another supplier who came around that very day, quoted, and had the job completed within the week.

Suffice to say... the job is done and the Empress is very happy with the result and the fact that the house is now back in order..  

There has been a "New"... 
(and I use the term "New" loosley as the Emperess has had it in sorage for about 10 years) 
Wallpaper border print put up above the picture rail...

Imagine my delight on discovering that the pre pasted glue had lost its stickability.
After running the first length through the waterbath... climbing up the ladder while wrestling with a length of drippy wet wallpaper...
I'd just get the length smoothed out and in position climb down then turn around to find the other end peeling gracefully off the wall behind me...

Frustration Central!

Finally finding a roll that still had some workable glue... I eventually got the job done but not without just a bit of swearing...

Border print finally not peeling off the wall...

Border Print close-up

The Tiling in the laundry... I'll be doing myself... I've tiled before and it's a job that I like doing...

The purchase of the tiles is a whole other story... To save some money on the budget we secided to look for "End of range" tiles on sale
I found the right quantitiy of tiles in a colour and size suitablefor the job to cover 2 and 1/2 square meters of wall behind the washing machine and laundry trough between the window sill and floor in the laundry area.
3 boxes at $8 a box... $24 total
Bargain!

The Empress was impressed with the find and very happy about the cost... 
On the way out of the store she managed to spy a sample of some small glass mosaics  
"Oooh" she cooed
"I like these Princess" her eyes lighting up... and "I think they'd make a lovely border along the top of the others... Don't you?"
"How many sheets would we need"
After some rapid mathematics with the helpfully hovering sales woman we decided that 5 tile sheets would suffice if they were cut in half...
"There goes the budget" I grumbled as we finally left the store
 The Empress almost skipping her way blissfully to the car announced...

"Well... We saved so much on the other tiles... I may as well have what
I wan't!"
Needless to say that 2 weeks and the best part of $150.00 later... we have some lovely looking  albeit expensive mosaics to go with the real bargains...
I'm just hoping that the left over glue from my Brothers' recent tiling adventure will stick them to the wall and we won't have a repeat of the wallpapering fiasco!