Having received an eye-watering quotation for the building works, we have worked out that we will have to do as much of the clearing of the property as we can (or find a labourer who is a little cheaper - but no success as yet for this). So I started bright and early trying to work out what I realistically can and can’t do:

1) I can easily remove all the shelving and shelf brackets 2) I can remove the water softener without incident 3) I can remove polystyrene ceiling tiles (they’re quite fun actually - an entire ceiling full can be done in under an hour. 4) Ceramic tiles are definitely too much for my wrists to cope with! After an hour with mallet and brick bolster, I had removed only 40 of them, and my wrists were too painful to do any more.

The potentially embarrassing discovery of the day is that, if I use the upstairs loo, I need to ensure that the middle bedroom door is shut or that the toilet door is shut, otherwise the neighbours will view entirely more than they ever wanted too - thankfully, this was during the middle of the day, when everyone was out - phew!!!

Ceiling Tiles from Front Bedroom

Here is the pile of ceiling tiles from the front bedroom

Front Bedroom with Ceiling Tiles removed

And here is the ceiling with tiles removed - doesn’t look too bad, thankfully. Only three more rooms of ceiling tiles to go!!!

An hour of hitting tiles only got me a few removed

Much effort to not much result with the ceramic tile removal, sadly.

In between all this, After school, the boy came and helped out with removing wallpaper - we’re getting him to work on his room first - and fully supervising him, promise!
After all that, I was shattered - my FitBit (other devices are available) told me that I managed 8K steps and 39 active minutes - a huge increase on general numbers for the previous few months. This might all get me fit - but I am trying to be careful and not overdo it - promise…