Woman in a plaid shirt uses a roller to paint a wall grey

Paint · the one to read first

Paint that survives being wiped

Finish matters more than colour in a house that is used. Flat paint on a hallway burnishes wherever a hand touches it; a harder sheen survives cleaning but shows every wall defect. Where each belongs, why the ceiling is the exception, and why the second coat is not optional.

efforta weekend
undonewith a repaint
messhigh

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How to read an entry

Every job here carries three numbers before it carries an opinion: what it costs in effort, whether it can be undone, and how much of the room has to be covered first.

24jobs written up, seven sections

14that go back to how they were

0that need a trade or a skip

Eight worth starting with

An edit, not the roster — the whole register runs to 24

Show only

№	Section
01	Repair	A dripping tap	twenty minutes	fully	low
02	Storage	Shelves that hold	an afternoon	with filler	low
03	Paint	Cutting in	an afternoon	with a repaint	medium
04	Floors	Under the carpet	an afternoon	no	high
05	Second-hand	Measuring before buying	twenty minutes	fully	none
06	Surfaces	Sealing and resealing	an afternoon	fully	medium
07	Light	Three lamps, not one ceiling light	an evening	fully	none
08	Repair	A chair joint	an evening	fully	low

Eight of twenty-four shown — sort by effort, undoing or messRead the whole register

Drawn once, for the whole site

Every job starts as a plan and a door swing

Before anything is moved, the room gets drawn: the walls, the window, where the door opens to and how much floor that arc eats. Most furniture problems are that arc, and most of them are solved by a twenty-minute push rather than a purchase.

The dashed rectangle is the run the measurements are taken against — measure it before you buy anything.