Post-it's for sanity.

So after doing the rounds a 5th time with the painter - showing him what was not ok - (and you'd be surprised what is ok by his standards)... I lost the plot. It seems like they want you to stand next to them as you point out evident issues and then stand next to them as they paint over the errors which are as clear as an orange Easyjet plane flying in the blue sky overhead (but decidedly easier because they're these paint errors arn't in transit, they simply glare back at us, unmoving from the wall).

To put an end to this I decided to liberate the frustrated art director in me with the help of bright yellow post-it notes. Resulting in the house looking like a large 3D print proof with comments and annotations scrawled all over it.

Most satisfying.

Even more satisfying to see how defeated the painter looked when he next came over! However it did lead to interesting situations such as these:

Painter: 'Why have you put a post-it up there?'
Me: 'Because the wallpaper is ripped...'
Painter: 'That was ripped by the window installer...'
I then pointed out the nearest window was 4 meters away and that the rip had been stuck down with wallpaper glue in an attempt to cover the damage... to which he replied
'Well I guess he had to rip it it's the only way to put this wallpaper up...'
Me: bang bang bang (sound of my head against the wallpapered wall...)

On the other end of the scale there is (thank goodness) the Landscape gardener. He poses his own challenges at the very other side of the spectrum. He loves to talk and draw out and ponder and suggest and confirm and reconfirm everything over and over again. At school he would have been the bespectacled boy at the back of the room with his hand permanently in the air, back arched in earnest enthusiasm 'oh I know, I know, I know, oh please ask me miss, pleeeeease aaaaaask meeeeeeee!' But what a nice change to have someone who is interested, passionate and who doesn't feign blindness when it comes to obvious issues and who wants nothing more then to stand out in the cold with you going over the finer points of garden paving for an hour at the crack of dawn.