And guess what I did with it

Cool, eh?

So I’ve been working my ass off at Sunnycroft. Particularly because my sewing machine up and DIED on me, and so busy busy dusting seemed a good alternative. I LOVE ME SOME DUST.

Before I bombard you with photos, I should probably say at least something about my life at the moment. Uni is rubbish, still hate it, but cheerful that I’ve had some time off from it this week. Except I had an essay to write which I have done, but wow. That thing was so much more difficult than it sounded. I feel I could do better but I’ve really run out of ideas/things to say without repeating myself, so I’m just trying to tidy it up a bit. I hope it goes well.

Ferris is more wickedly hardcore than ever and can shake hands with you now. It is the cutest thing you have ever seen. SERIOUSLY. The cuteness does not always make up for the embarrassing moments where he decides the perfect place to poop would be behind a REVERSING CAR. Yeah Ferris, nice decision making skills you’ve got there.

OK back to photos…

So yesterday I spent around an hour just cleaning cushions.

This sounds easy but it is not. First you have to examine them for insects, and photograph ANY damage, no matter how small it is. Then you have to get your silly backpack hoover and put muslin over the end, then the attachment, and then mesh over the thing you want to clean. Then you put it on its lowest suction setting and clean the cushion in a grid, in both directions, front and back. Then wrap it in acid free tissue, IN THE RIGHT WAY, and start on the next. This takes time. I am certainly learning to be more patient.

When it’s all done though you really feel a sense of achievement. Even more so when you examine the muslin over the hoover nozzle, which collects almost all the dust and dirt you collect.

This was what came out of it - it’s about half a centimeter high, and wow is it disgusting. True fact: the darker the dirt that comes out, the older it is. If it’s quite light then it’s relatively new dirt.

I also found this behind a huge wardrobe.

It was seriously gross. It was covered in weird marks, and what we thought was frass, but I couldn’t find any woodworm exit holes. There was a dead wasp inside, a leaking oil bottle and all sorts of rubbish, but it cleaned up ever so well and the original manual is in a really good condition.

This was the most wicked chair I’ve ever come across. It’s a library chair and I’m sure I’m the last person in the entire world to have come across it. OH MY GOD LIBRARY CHAIR HOW DO I LOVE THEE? MOST ARDENTLY. I didn’t know really what it was - when it’s in chair form it just looks like a teensy chair with a layer of carpet underneath. Weird.

I was charged with cleaning it, so I asked Natasha what it was all about. She came over and, in her tricksy ways, she transformed it! It went from teensy chair to quite big steps! WELL KNOCK ME DOWN WITH A FEATHER, LIBRARY CHAIR.

So I cleaned it up and wow, some serious dirt on that as well. Enough to rival all of those cushions. You can see that, since the bottom step is the only one that gets any light exposure, there’s lot of serious damage to it.

Then we hoovered the carpet, covered it in tissue, and made a serious mess and confusion trying to roll it. Now I get a week to recover, hurrah!

I love the East Bedroom. It looks out on the avenue of Wellingtonia and is just generally full of nice old things.

I had to clean all the small objects in the room with a pony hair brush (believe me when I say there’s a lot of things to dust - who needs two china perfume bottles? Seriously.) Then I had to wrap everything individually in acid-free tissue paper. Then wrap them up in bubble wrap and put them in a crate in the right order.

Here’s an assortment of what I found.

An old pair of spectacles. Not sure who they belonged to, but they say Harvey’s of Wellington on them. They’ve got really pretty edges too.

Box of starched collars. I found a pearl cufflink in the bottom of the box too, when I took them all out to clean.

Riding and Driving: A Horselover’s Magazine, from 1939. There’s loads of these going back to 1936, and some War Illustrated too.

Assorted MAN THINGS, there’s cufflinks and belt buckles and all sorts in here. Some of it I really don’t know understand.

So there you have an insight into my morning. Just imagine it all in a room that is utterly FREEZING. The one thing I do really love about the house is how it gets proper condensation.

You can really tell it’s cold.