I DON'T think I've mentioned before but we're putting in a conservatory in the very near future. This isn't a sudden decision. In fact it's taken months of planning and a lot of late night conversations. Most of the planning, I have to admit, has involved persuading the man of the house that a conservatory is needed at all. Men, on the whole, are rather old stick-in-the-muds when it comes to adding anything to the home. Having been married for some considerable time to man who considered that if something was even remotely serviceable it need never be replaced ('you only have to avoid the tiny little spring that's sticking through the mattress and the rest of the bed is fine, dear') I know the problem. This applied to chairs (prop the missing leg up with a book), electrical equipment (I'm sure you imagined getting an electric shock from the washing machine), all forms of decorations (what's the matter with maroon flock wallpaper?) and all forms of carpeting (why don't we wait until the children grow up, they'll only dirty a new carpet). To be fair, this same person wasn't one to go out and buy new anything for himself. He was, as many a male is, perfectly happy to wear clothes he had worn for years, and mourned any threadbare item I finally managed to wrench off him and send to a charity shop (who usually stuck their nose up at it anyway). He could not see the need to buy new clothes when the ones he had were still halfway decent; and neither could he ever work out a woman's need to be fashionable. If men had their way women would still be wearing bustles. Men just don't really understand a woman's primeval need to buy new things not just because they have worn out, but for a myriad of other reasons. Too many to mention here. The urge to add a conservatory to the house wasn't because one had worn out, we've never had one. So we had to use all those persuasive tactics which are part of a woman's instinctive make-up from the day she is born. Oh, alright, some may call it nagging. One of our winning arguments was that it would increase the value of the house. We asked all kinds of people if this was true and they all agreed. It was just a coincidence that they all happened to be women. Ladies, this is a persuasive argument and you can use it for most external additions (ie) porches, double glazing, french doors, patios and indeed any garden feature. But, and this is advice from an expert, don't try it on with new carpets, the latest dishwasher or, indeed, any item of household furnishing. It doesn't work. Once it had been agreed by all of us that a conservatory would be a good idea, we set about getting quotes. I know this is the sensible thing to do, but I always feel so bad about the ones who didn't get the job, especially if they are all nice, and these were. Apart from the one from Plymouth who didn't even get back to us with a quote, which makes you feel as if you're not good enough for his services. Anyway, all is settled, albeit with a fair amount of discussion on the size, shape, height and style. My daughter had to be persuaded down from the giddy heights of something akin to a mini Crystal Palace and settle for a little more modesty construction wise. Because the conservatory goes across the back of the house, encompassing my sitting room and their sitting room, there has to be a division in the middle because I smoke and they don't. So, in line with proposals from the government to ban smoking in public places, we are now to be politically correct for the first time in our lives. One job prior to building is for me to take all the plants out of the bit of garden I'm sacrificing, a job which I don't think the foundation diggers would be willing to do with any kind of finesse. Or at least I doubt if they will be willing to replant them. Once the thing is finished we will both be faced with an empty room each to decorate and furnish, as well as put down flooring. I note that the other half of the conservatory is already looking at rattan furniture and the like, but my bit is going to be much simpler, mainly style a la plant pot. The excitement of having double the room for seed growing is building, as is the pile of seed packets. I'm putting aside the fact that with a whole border of plants to find homes for in the spring I'll not really be needing any more. I just love tempting shy little seeds out of their shells. What I will need is flooring and I've decided that it's going to be tiling. At the moment I can't really afford the marble Italianate effect so it'll have to be vinyl which, I said to myself, is fairly easy to lay and I could do it myself. Or could I? A dim distant memory arose from the past concerning tiles. Once, when I was using red sticky back tiles on the larder floor, my son, then very small, got hold of one and stuck it in the middle of the hall floor. It took weeks to get off and visitors used to walk around it carefully, perhaps thinking it was some kind of shrine. Then came the bathroom, and I bought cork tiles. These were said to be ideal for a bathroom; warm, clean and 'easy to lay'. A big fat lie as I discovered only too soon. The packet gave no indication on how to stick them down, only saying use a good glue. I threw myself on the mercy of the local hardware store and came home with a large can of something which claimed to stick down everything from a feather to an aircraft carrier. Having warned the family that the bathroom was going to be out of bounds for some hours, so anything they wanted to do they had better do now, I began. I had found instructions on the actual process in a DIY handbook, but like most handbooks it was aimed mainly at people with a modicum of experience and sense. My instinct on how to begin led me to want to start at the back wall and work forward. Even I wouldn't start at the door and trap myself in (well I did do this once with carpet laying but then I learn by mistakes). The book, however, said start in the centre, so I did. I applied the glue to the floor in a rough square and fitted my first tile. Seconds later it popped up again. I pushed it down again, same result. So I got an encyclopaedia and plonked it on top. By the time I had worked my way from FUN to HUG and STR to XYZ the bathroom looked like stock taking day at a library. I thought I had cracked it, and envisaged a nice cork tiled bathroom in next to no time. However, when I took off the first book the tile curled up again, looking like a railway sandwich. Ditto the next lot. I decided I must have the wrong sort of glue, so went to another shop and explained the problem and was sold a heavy, tacky and very smelly replacement which had a small plastic implement to apply it. For the first few tiles all went well, but then I realised that the little plastic implement was too small. If you left it on top of the glue it sank like a stone, if you put it on the floor it stuck to the floor. It also stuck to my fingers and anything else in range. The glue was working though, alarmingly quickly and if I had to reposition a tile I had to do it fast. Leaning over to yank one off, my hands stuck to another and I was constantly having to lever bits of me off the floor. The can, by now tacky, stuck to the floor too and the little plastic thing was now firmly adhered to my fingers. All this plus the fact that the bathroom was fairly small, and I had less and less room to work in. I completed one corner crouched on the loo, another from the bath. Needing a cigarette, and not wanting to light one in the vicinity of what was highly inflammable glue, I attempted to walk out and realised one of my shoes was stuck to a tile and I had to shuffle like an Eskimo with snow shoes on. Eventually, blood, sweat and tears not withstanding, I had passably finished the floor and only had to beat back those who swore they needed to use the loo right at that moment. A few days later I had to varnish the tiles to seal them. The instructions said to give each coat 24 hours to dry. As I knew nobody would agree to wait 24 hours to use the loo, I devised a plan to varnish each tile on alternative days, and issued everyone with the rules for playing hopscotch. Remembering all this I am now slowly coming round to the idea that rush matting on my conservatory floor sounds like an awfully attractive alternative.
