An idea is born

Chris seemed keen to come out with me again to do other work to improve the house and we had cast our eyes around to see what ideas we could come up with. I knew that Mrs S was unhappy with the lino in the shower room, but this is such a small room that working in there is awkward to say the least; it doesn't help that the floor is at two levels about an inch or so apart with a 45% slope between them. Ideally the floor should be tiled, but I was keeping quiet about this.

One day, while the four of us were out there, Chris and I had called in at one of the hardware stores in the area. Stacked high just inside the doorway was tongued and grooved timber on special offer. Chris and I looked at it and the idea came to both of us simultaneously. A timber ceiling in the hall would look so much better than the polystyrene tiles I had used to hold up the straw and cow dung. We wasted no time in obtaining the approval of both Mrs S and Mrs Chris before measuring the ceiling and racing back to buy the timber. There was plenty of room to store it and it was hardly going to go off.

It's one thing having the idea: planning how to execute the idea is a completely different matter, as Chris and I were to find out.