The Nice People Thread, No.16: A Universe of Niceness.

chris_m

PasturesNew wrote: »

And I've just spotted the empty vacuum cleaner box .... kept from when I bought it "in case" it needed to go back "with the original packaging" ....

Hehe, that reminds me of when I had to buy a new computer monitor - in the pre-LCD days.
I unpacked it, installed it then went to put the box in the loft using my usual practice of pushing the box through the hole and giving it a good shove - it came back down so I assumed I hadn't got quite the right angle of trajectory and tried again. Down it came again.

Oh well, dig out the stepladder and have a look, something must be blocking it. Oh yes, something was indeed - a huge pile of other boxes that had gone up there over the previous few years :eek:

Deeming it time for a clear out, I think I took something like eight bags of polystyrene packing blocks and a similar number of bags/boxes of cut up and/or flattened boxes down to the tip - quite a few of them for items which had died (way outside their warranty) or that I'd disposed of for other reasons :embarasse

It was amazing how large the loft was when I'd finished :rotfl:

PasturesNew

chris_m wrote: »

It was amazing how large the loft was when I'd finished

I've always had a fear of lofts ... and spiders ... and "spotting a problem I didn't wish to see" .... here there's actually a fitted ladder and light.... but, alone, there's also the potential of doing something daft and regretting it... whether I'm in the loft wondering how to get my leg out of Bed2, or lying on the landing wondering how to phone 999.

I have a rule of "nothing in the loft" and I stick to it. If I'd been putting all this stuff in the loft, it'd be awful having to try to get it all down the ladder and then suddenly being faced with the enormity of my hoarding.

PasturesNew

Does anybody remember, back in the 1970s, if you wandered into a random Post Office or other shop that sold cards/giftwrap draped over a hanger ... some of the giftwrap was "a poster". I bought 2-3 of these and stuck them with blutack on my bedroom wall.... they were a cheap solution and my only access to "something on the wall that wasn't Donny Osmond, David Cassidy or David Essex from a Jackie magazine".

I was just thinking, one of those, a tasteful one, would obscure where some floating shelves used to be

silvercar

PN wrote:

I could walk round the house pointing to "things that didn't quite go to plan, so I put them in a pile on the floor and walked away".

We all have those. Sometimes little ideas work well, like my ecoflap letterbox, that I though was bound to fail. More often than not, they fail or worse partly fail and are a constant reminder.

It will need to be "dressed as a room", so I plan to use boxes with a blow up bed on top to see how that looks. The boxes can be my "packed boxes", maybe .... out of sight, out of mind .... and then I need a valance round it..... so that might not work out due to size differences... again, until you've got all the parts you don't know how well it'll turn out.

I have valances going spare. When we change the colour scheme, I never know what to do with the valance so end up keeping it in case it turns out useful. Definitely have a cream coloured one from a standard double bed with box pleat. There may also be a mid blue coloured one in the same size. Let me know if you can use them.

PasturesNew

silvercar wrote: »

....

I won't put you to that trouble, I'm sure a walk down a road with 4-5 charity shops in it would yield one "that'd do".

I'm not really deciding how to dress the room.... single or double. Most houses for sale have been singles as that 2nd bedroom. It could take a double (indeed, 2 doors along there are two couples sharing), but which way round to put the bed.... double might present better for "look, you can get a double in here", but single might make it "look bigger".

The room is L-shaped and 12' wide. It's then 8', plus a 5½'x2½' (or so) alcove.

For single, the head of the bed goes in the alcove... but 5½' wide is "too tight" to make a double look good.... so then the bed would need to be turned 90degrees, into the middle of the room.

Depending which I choose, the bed will go into different spots, so it's not easy to work out what's best.... I'm kind of leaving it until the room's clear enough to get the airbed out and toss it around to see.

Theoretically the room is a mirror image of mine, but mine's a little larger... the main "square" of mine is 10'x12' (+alcove) with Bed2 being 8'x12' (+alcove).

I bet I end up moving everything to one layout .... then changing my mind and spending another hour moving it all round again You can't tell until you actually see it "in the flesh"

EDIT: I think I've decided. Single. Makes the room look bigger, otherwise, wherever you put it, the bed's in the way of the door opening properly.

It's beginning to look like it has the basics of "a proper house" and not "Old Ma Shinty's Store of Old Tat in Boxes"

EDIT 2: Just cleared/packed one shelf of the narrowest kitchen base unit

A bit of "little and often" is still working... although it's an obstacle course to move around now as I've put things down where they didn't immediately have a plan attached to them... "stuff to sort out in a bit, not now... just put them down there". I used to have a hallway, that's gone! That's got a stack of tip/charity shop items.

PasturesNew

One Aldi "bag for life" bag in the car ready to drop off at a random charity shop.... another 1 bag that contains a few more items + 2 bits for the tip ... and three empty appliance boxes are in the shed. I have a hallway again.

For dressing a fake single bed, I'll first try to use an old sleeping bag I've "kept in case", that can then go into a double quilt cover which can be "folded under" on the far side.... and that should then look like a single duvet + cover on a single bed I've got a blow up lilo, 20" wide... to put on top of the boxes, hopefully giving an "idea that there's a mattress here". I've plenty of towels I can use to reshape things if needs be...

All this apparent activity is punctuated by lots of "aimlessly wandering from room to room, thinking, looking and occasionally picking up one small item to put down somewhere else"

Pyxis

Could it take two singles? Then you'd have the best of both worlds, especially if viewers have two children, etc.
You wouldn't have to have them side by side. They could be on different walls.

Borrow another lilo, or make boxes look like another bed with sheets and even just a duvet cover on it.


I always feel that to show that a room could be a double/twin might interest a few more people.
Especially if you already know that another house has two couples sharing, so you know it can be done, but a viewer might not realise that if they just see a single bed.

Also, the agent is bound to describe it as a double, so if viewers only see a single bed, they might wonder what else the agent has 'misled' them about, iyswim.

PasturesNew

Pyxis wrote: »

...

It's a minefield whatever you do ... and whatever you do, somebody will always say there's no need, or do the other thing

I'd put a 2nd single in, except... I'm going to use that space for packed boxed and a miscellany of finds boxed up... and a large rug that's rolled up because it's too big for any rooms I've got, but my aunt sent it to me from abroad, and it won't have been cheap, so I have to hang onto it, iyswim... especially if one day in the future she were to ever visit and ask "where's the rug?"

Pyxis

PasturesNew wrote: »

It's a minefield whatever you do ... and whatever you do, somebody will always say there's no need, or do the other thing

I'd put a 2nd single in, except... I'm going to use that space for packed boxed and a miscellany of finds boxed up... and a large rug that's rolled up because it's too big for any rooms I've got, but my aunt sent it to me from abroad, and it won't have been cheap, so I have to hang onto it, iyswim... especially if one day in the future she were to ever visit and ask "where's the rug?"

There you go then.......... use the packed boxes as a pretend bed, lay the rug over the boxes, and a sheet over the rug, with a pillow up one end, and go from there.

Even if it's not exactly the actual size of a single bed, it still gives the impression of a bed, and you still have somewhere to put your boxes and rug!

It would also look nicer to viewers than a pile of boxes, too!

Jackmydad

Watch out that there's nothing in the boxes that could hurt anyone if they sat on it as if it was a bed.
Working on the principle that if anything can go wrong then it probably will!