D.I.Y. (Destroy It Yourself)

DIY has never been a great passion of mine. The letters B and Q have been known to bring me out in a rash, and my tool-wielding skills just about stretch to knowing which end of a hammer you use to hit things with. But this week has been like a crash course in Do It Yourself. That's crash as in 'crashing down' or 'crash bang wallop'. I'm finding it hard to type this because I nearly cut off the tip of my middle finger today when I shut it in the front door, but let me soldier on.

We ripped off the seventies wallpaper, along with a lot of plasterboard, to reveal more holes than the plot of the Da Vinci Code. Our walls are now 60% Polyfilla and are waiting for several licks of paint. Actually, make that several slurps of pain. To smooth them down we rented a buffing machine - an enormously heavy thing that made me its bitch for a day. There I was, Sars mask on, earplugs in, goggles in place - oh, how I wish I'd had a camera. Every time I breathed the goggles steamed up so I could hardly see the walls I was meant to be buffing. We pulled up the carpet - great cathartic fun, ripping its green hideousness to bits - thinking that we would find beautiful floorboards beneath, waiting for sanding. But no. We found two great slabs of concrete among the wood and a hole that appears to lead to the centre of the earth. One moment of sobbing despair later, we had arranged for a man to come round and put down new flooring. There goes our home improvement loan.

We also put up coving, which was like trying to solve one of those fiendish Chinese puzzles, removed the skirting boards - more big holes - and tried to level off the concrete slabs. Butter has learned to use a chisel like Michelangelo, but she had a number of what I like to call 'episodes' today, especially when the 'No More Big Holes' stuff we'd just bought at, deep breath, B&Q (where we've spent £300 this week and only seem to have a piece of sandpaper to show for it), turned out to be missing a nozzle. Then I dropped the sugar soap, lighting the touchpaper of her fury and unleashing a torrent of naughty words. I would have got her to wash her mouth out with sugar soap afterwards, but there wasn't any left.

Of course, it's going to look gorgeous when it's finished, like something from the wildest fantasties of that foppish decor-meister Laurence Llewellyn-Bowen. But without the bright purple MDF. There are no photos because I keep forgetting to take the camera, but just imagine a building site. Then add mess.