Today’s plan was to paint the landing cabinet doors in the contrast colour of Crown Hall & Stairs Naughty Step and then zoom off to Wick to get a pale green for the stairwell, as I’d had a text from David to say he’s hoping to come on Friday and I wanted to have it done before he arrived.
The colour was drying lighter than the colour shown on the outside of the tin and the further down the doors I got, the more I started to think that it actually might work for the big stairwell wall as well – and since it’s being used in the hall, it would tie upstairs and downstairs together nicely. So I bit the bullet, put the platform up over the stairs, masked off the edges and went for it. I did have a slight moment of panic halfway through when I thought it had gone a bit too Southwold beach hut, but I reckon it looks okay, and so far no sign of the yellow tinge coming through.
It’s going to need the once-over with a roller, because it’s showing the brush marks quite badly, but not a complete proper second coat. Just the bannisters left to paint upstairs now!
Earlier this week my solicitor emailed me to say that the Scottish Ministers’ solicitor had sent her a signed title deed and a plan, so all that remained was for her to complete the registration of the disposition and we were good to go for mortgaging purposes. I had a glance through it, but something was nagging in the back of my head and I when I opened it up again the following morning, I saw what it was. They’d used the wrong plan! It was about to be registered with the initial draft of the plan, which didn’t show the rights of access over the croft. Not an issue right now, since I have the croft tenancy and can grant myself permission to cross the crofted land, but a potential legal mess in years to come when either I or my executors come to sell it. My solicitor’s come back to me today to say that the other side have acknowledged it was their error in sending the wrong plan to their clients for signature, and are redoing the whole thing (my solicitor’s offer of getting out the office crayons and colouring in the applicable bits was politely turned down!). So that delays us by another couple of weeks, but the end is definitely in sight on that one.
I shall hopefully be letting David have free run of the house tomorrow to sort the stairs out, so my job will be to go round my house and make a list of absolutely everything I need to buy to turn Ethel’s into a home from home for my guests – with Black Friday deals starting tomorrow, it’s time to shop.