We could get access to it for about 6 days in total before the decorators came in proper. Until then, it was ours and we could do what we wanted with it, so Gab got in and started painting it.
Gabby: How the hell were we going to fill it and make it look believable? I was really aware of how much work this would take and started enlisting randon people to donate pieces of furniture that they had going spare. I wrote lists, lost them all, so wrote new ones. James got fed up with me constantly writing lists of furniture.
James:I have such guilt about this! I was desperately completing a corporate video project whilst Gab had gathered a group of her work-mates to paint our set. I walked in at the end and they'd done it all. They were great.
Gabby: Yeah, I blagged some friends, Steve, Luke, Phil and Lisa from work to come and have a pizza & painting party, they all seemed up for it. It then turned up and showed them round the flat, and they all looked at me like 'no way in hell will we ever get this done...but we might as well just start painting just to amuse her'. We started moving the furniture out of the rooms and then found that the room we had ear-marked for Beth's room had a rather large antique chest at the bottom that had literally been boxed in, when they put up the fake wall. It was physically immpossible to move it and it took up nearly a third of a very small room! I didn't even think would we could get a bed in there and there was no other room that would be feasable to use as Beth's bedroom. My nervous breakdown started exactly at this point, meanwhile James was editing a video about f***ing boilers!!! I decided to ignore it and carry on, thinking some how we would get round it.The kitchen was a mess. the walls were bright orange and covered in adhesive where the wood panneling had been ripped off. Myself and Steve managed to cover it by mounting wallpaper lining with spray adhesive on the walls. We then painted it added a border, and hey prestow, you couldn't tell, (well on camera at least).
We got it finished - it is amazing how fast you can paint some walls when you are not bothered about all the finishing touches. James arrived and gave his seal of approval. I felt some what frustrated at the lack of his presence, even though it wasn't particulary his fault.
