It is very irritating ...

when you have slept right up until the alarm goes each morning during the week, turned the alarm off on Friday so it doesn't ring over the weekend - and then you wake up multiple times on Friday night and irrevocably by about 3 am on Saturday, and then wake at not quite 4:00 on Sunday morning.

Very irritating.

But not quite as irritating as when you reach the last room on your house decorating schedule and discover that your nearest DIY store (that would be B&Q) no longer stocks the brand of paint that you have been using (that would be Crown).  That did have the advantage that B&Q was discounting the Crown paint that it had left over, which was helpful for the wall paint and the skirting board paint. It has the disadvantage that they aren't getting any more in, no matter how close you are to finishing your project  and we need one more tin of the jade highlighting paint:-(

Nothing for it, then.  We'll have to go further afield, to somewhere that is still stocking Crown paint. (That would be Homebase, in Sheffield). And they had the wall paint and the skirting board paint (which, of course, we had bought in B&Q at half price) but not the jade.  One tin we need; just one tin.  The helpful person at Homebase looked up his database.  The jade has been discontinued :-O There are no tins of it in any of their stores nationwide and they can't get it in for us  :-O

We pondered our options.  Repainting everything in the house that is already in jade is definitely not an option.  We tried the B&Q in Sheffield. It's bigger and might have had a stray tin of jade paint - but no.  I had a quick search on the internet while we were on our way back to Chesterfield.  Couldn't find any anywhere.

One tin ;-(

So we went home. Then The Builder remembered that he had an empty tin of jade ready to throw out. He found it and took it back to our local DIY store where they mixed up a very close approximation in a tin of white paint.  So we've gone with that.  I have to say that I can't see any significant difference between the original jade and the new one.  The decorating has recommenced :-)

While we were out and about over the weekend I had my annual eye test (no change there) and my annual hearing test (no change there either).  We had lunch in the Rutland in Chesterfield, simply because we were passing and we were hungry. And then we went and ordered new carpet for the downstairs and for the two bedrooms. A man came this morning to measure everything up and says that we were over quoted.  The full cost is about £200 less than the estimate.  So that's good.  It's always nice when things cost less than you expect them to.  The carpet fitters are coming in two Saturdays time. They may do the house in two stages or, if it goes well, perhaps even in one.

So close to finishing!  We need to tidy up and spruce up the back porch and the bathroom and make the garden look loved and then get an estate agent in to value the house and then put it up for sale. Easy peasy :-D