I start this article by saying its funny how you can put stuff off in life. A lot of mine is usually confidence and part of my ND / mental health i can really struggle to get into something where there are unknowns. One of these being decorating and diy. The weird thing is once i do get into them i really enjoy what i get into. Its strange as coding and building systems i never get this as i have done this for so many years. Its the same with decorating i just don't do as much of it as i used to. This is coming from someone who has done DIY and decorating for years. I've renovated a church building and two houses.
Once i do get going I really enjoy what i do. This being a spring refresh of my personal space. You will see from the Photos below. My bedroom was and chocolate brown colour which hadnt been touched since pre covid. But i decide that, this year, i was going to change that. I saw the bank holiday coming up and book the Tuesday off work as well. Which i thought would give me 4 solid days to get it done. Which should be plenty of time.
Thank fully my brother works and lives on site for his job so i was able to store the stuff out of my room in his room. His room isnt a box bedroom. Its also funny as growing up I would always have the bigger bedroom being the older brother but now the tables have turned. But to be honest i've made the most out of the space in my bedroom by maximizing space building my own custom units to go into it.
It turns out what i was dreading doing my room was better than I expected and it gave me some well earn rest from the computer so for 2 and half days i didnt even turn my laptop on. I've written about a digital detox before but this was even better and it felt nice in a way to disconnect from a digital world. Sure i still had my phone to listen to music of and evening. Would highly recommend the nothing 3a pro fantastic phone packed with featues so glad i got it.
Like any thing diy, and life in general, its about prep work at the beginning, for decorating my bed room it was about ensuring i had enough room to decorate and emptying as much as the room as possible. Thanks to my brother I had space to do this. To be fair i really have a good family i get on well with my brother, mum and dad. We help each out as much a possible and yes i help with chores and DIY around the house but thats what families are about.
I had finished the working day friday around 4:30 and usually i would chill of an evening and instead saw this as an opportunity to crack on with my room with a little nudge from mum and i am so glad i did. I started around 5ish and got a good chunk of the painting done that evening. Saturday I did some more painting and got the walls all about done. Sunday I did the undercoat and gloss. come the end of Sunday evening all the painting was done. I felt so happy the bulk of the work was done. In two and a half days I had painted a whole room and no masking tape in sight for cutting in the edges I do it old school by hand. Cutting in is like second nature to me, like coding, i can just get on to getting it done.
Today (Monday), i had a lay in after two and a half days solid work, of course i broke for a couple of hours before bed each evening. But come Sunday i was really struggling, my body wasnt used to as much physical work but none the less I pushed my self to get it done and sometimes in life its whats needed to get something done. I am so glad I did push myself I was able to get cross the finish line in a fraction of the time i thought it was going to take.
One thing i will say about decorating is it will set you back anywhere between £100-200 by the time youve bought the paint, brushes and other decorating gear. Plus any matching accessories for the new room. As i was coming away from my favourite colour blue and moving to a green based colour scheme I had to buy lots of colour matching accessories. I mostly Shopped around on line and my local stores simply didnt have them in stock.
I ended up with sourcing accessories from different retailers and was really impressed with how quick things turned up. The head board i did put on fast delivery service to ensure it got here way ahead of time. Most of the accessories turned up on Saturday. Thank fully my brother listened out for the door whilst i cracked on.
To sum up, sometimes in life we put things off, and keep saying I will do it tomorrow, or next week, but if anything I've learned don't put stuff off. No matter how hard they are as the reward is worth the hard work. I say this as writing this article in my new refereshed room a day ahead of schedule and its fantastic.
