A New Project

I have an unexpected project. For complicated family reasons I have to deal with a house sale. It is a tiny one bedroomed house - I just calculated square footage American style and I think it would be about 400 square feet (in the UK we are less precise about house size and use sligthly vague descriptions like "tiny one bedroom house"). The house is late Victorian / Edwardian, essentially sound, but looks a mess as nothing has been done to it for some time and someone began a decorating project that never got very far. I looked round it with an estate agent yesterday and he confirmed what I suspected - a bit of money spent on it now should result in a significant increase in the sale value, so I have a refurbishing project on my hands!

The estate agent was incredibly helpful in telling me what would be worth doing and what features would appeal to buyers. My "to do" list looks something like this:

- Strip off remaining wallpaper, replaster one small section of wall, redecorate with lining paper and paint everything!

- Put down laminate flooring downstairs and carpet upstairs (stairs themselves to be painted, which is apparently popular though it sounds rather impractical to me!)

- Replace part of the kitchen ceiling where there has been a leak

- Replace cracked kitchen sink and warped work surface

- Sand down outdated wooden kitchen cupboard doors and paint

- Sweep chimney and check (and fix?) condition of grate and flue (it seems a working open fireplace is a big selling point)

- Some regrouting / retiling in kitchen and bathroom

I don't intend to do any of the work myself - no time! - but it is going to take quite a lot of coordinating decorators, plumbers, chimney sweeps and assorted other tradesmen. Ideally I would like to get it done by April. Definitely going to be a challenge!