To be pissed off with decorating

[alibongo5]

We live in an old house which to be fair, we haven't put in the maintenance it required when our family were growing up. So now our kids are grown up, we are trying to get it a bit nicer.

But everything takes so long! I've spent ages stripping the window in the bathroom. Only to find that actually a lot of the wood needs replacing so it was all a waste of time.

And the bits that are ok is taking so long to strip - the paint stripper that promised to strip up to a million layers of paint actually only does one at a time. So three coats in, I'm finally seeing a little bit of progress. And that's after contorting myself to try scraping inaccessible bits of windowframe.

It always looks so easy on the DIY programmes on the TV. I'm beginning to think it would be a lot easier to just move house!

Are you a bit better off financially now that the kids have grown up? Could you pay someone to do the work, that's what I had to do, slowly, one room at a time.

My husband is a real DIYer and wouldn't dream of paying someone to do work we could do ourselves. And I agree really when I look at how much it would cost. If I suggested paying someone to do it, my husband would just add it to his very long list of things to do himself! So I just accept we're going to do it ourselves. But it's so slow! I demand instant results!

Can you. It just sand it a bit and paint over?