My Room-Swapping-and-Redecorating Project - Part I

Two very valid reasons have made me decide to swap the living room and bedroom in my flat: 1. Noise from my neighbours - both next door and upstairs - means I very rarely get an uninterrupted night's sleep, and it is beginning to take a toll on me. 2. Both my downstairs and next door neighbours smoke on their patio or balcony, resulting in me having to keep my bedroom windows shut when actually I'd much rather have them open, letting the sun and fresh air in.

I knew this was going to be a big project, and so I planned it well ahead. In February, I decided on the wallpapers and shades of paint for both rooms. Last week, two or three nights after work I began emptying out the cupboards and shelves in the living room.
I also pushed the chest of drawers from the tiny hallway into the kitchen, in order to allow for more room to shift the larger pieces of furniture.  

This chest of drawers normally sits in my tiny hallway. It holds my shoes, umbrellas and some more stuff such as foldable shopping bags.

Last Saturday, work began in earnest: We went to fetch the paint prepared for me at the shop, and started shifting those pieces which were too heavy for me to move on my own. Also, we peeled the paper off those two walls which will eventually be covered in the flowery wallpaper you saw in the February post linked above.

The progress we have made is best illustrated room by room. Let me start with what was the living room (or sitting room or lounge, whichever you prefer) since October 11, 2003:

Nothing has happened - yet! This is how it looked on April 12:

On April 13, still nothing happened - I worked all day and went to a work-related event afterwards, not coming home until shortly after 10 pm. On April 14 and 15, though, I used the early evening hours after work to empty cupboards, sideboards and shelves:

On the 16th (Saturday), I fetched all the covering tapes and sheets, paint brushes and rolls etc. from the cellar and prepared them where we were going to need them first:

Help arrived, and not long afterwards, we had stripped the wall that will become this room's "feature wall":

In the meantime, the Third Room changed slowly but surely from hardly-in-use to storage room, full to the brim with all the things that we'd been shifting from the other two rooms:

 That's it - no more can possibly go into this, the smallest of my rooms:

All the time, I was taking great care to make sure I knew exactly what was where, and to put those things to the back of the room which I knew I was not going to need over the next days.

More of what has been done in my next post. And tonight's post is, of course, proof that while I was incommunicado for a few days, I am now back in blogland - normal service will resume shortly :-)