A day that was supposed to be sunny but which was actually overcast for the morning. But I did the washing anyway and have taken it in and put it away. I also managed to sort through the last two drawers and now have summer and winter night attire organised appropriately. Another bag of stuff for the Bargain Centre as I have decided I don't like flannel pyjamas any more as I get tangled in them when trying to sleep.

I then called up to see Heather as I have not seen her for some time, and she led me astray.

Over the road from her is a white weatherboard house that has been empty for some time. The owner, who I presume to be Vera, is in the nursing home and will not be coming home again. How she has managed to keep hold of it and nevertheless find a place is beyond me. I assume it is her place as there are many empty cat food tins outside the back door and a grave for a cat, complete with metal engraved plaque and white picket fence. The yard is enclosed with a thicket of evergreen shrubs so there would be no issues of privacy at all, despite the house being crammed up to the road frontage on both sides (it is a corner location). It is sound, solidly constructed, has a good roof - you can see where I am going with this.

If it is Vera's (and I have to say I had always assumed she lived in the former police house which is green), then it also has no plumbing and may reek of cat wee as she had many many cats. That being the case it would also be lucky to get more than $80,000 which means, if I get the right price for the house in the UK, I could buy it, get the plumbing and wiring sorted, move in and then sell my own house for any additional funds required for painting it and getting a kitchen that functions.

Our strategy is that Heather will write to the address (assuming mail is being redirected) and offer assistance in clearing out the stuff, sorting it for decisions and generally scrubbing it up. That would give us a chance to get indoors and find out how badly it smells.....

If it looks possible to get rid of any residual odours (and the place has been empty for some years now) then it would be a rather nice house - level block, neighbours a long way away and a chance to subdivide the rear portion (as it opens onto the side street) without compromising privacy. Very tempting on the face of it.

Of course first I have to sell the house in the UK - today is the first day that inspections can be arranged (or will be, once they all wake up over there), so I am not holding my breath for a sale this side of Christmas.

A very quiet day today - only progress was another coat of paint on the door surround. I loafed.

I had a busier day than anticipated as the boss had forgotten to let me know of two late checkins at the cottages, so I had to hurtle into town and deal with those this morning.

It being grey and mizzly this morning, clearing to grey and dry, followed by some more grey and mizzly not much happened outdoors - in fact there was quite a chill outdoors, despite it being relatively warm. The chill oozed indoors so I have lit the fire, but will burn only one log as it is not actually cold, just damp.

One of the guests had left a book behind - a Steven King which is quite gripping. Not one of his horror novels, it is called "the Memory Collector" and involves nano-technology, high adventure and a trained hit man, affected by short term memory loss which I imagine will lead to some interesting scenarios.

Apart from sorting through my drawers and discarding some of my less frequently worn stuff, trying on the various recent acquisitions and discarding those that do not fit, I have not done much at all today.

The day in town was quite tiring all up. I left at ninethirty but, since I didn't want to queue for a car park I didn't want to get into Hobart proper till 11:30 at the earliest (I know where there are 2-hour metres close to the CBD). So I headed to Cambridge Park and looked at furniture I can not afford for an hour or so, then on to the big smoke where I did some banking, then called into Fragments to check out the Porters Paints colour charts. I do like going to Fragments  - they have tiles too so I checked those out, but at $3.50 each and minimum order of a box of 75 I think I will be going elsewhere for those, if I use tiles at all.

Back to the City Centre to check out the new Myer Store. Despite the huge fuss about the opening the thing that struck me most was the artful way they tried to disguise their lack of stock in any given department. Their socks range was laughably small (and outrageously expensive - $35 for three pairs!!). So it did not take me long to run out of things to look at, and I was still half an hour early for the podiatrist - so I found my fave asian takeaway, grabbed a sushi box and sat in Cat and Fiddle to eat it. Then on to the podiatrist who carried out some fairly extensive surgery on the feet before I rushed back to the meter ten minutes late. Hope they did not spot me on their cameras, but there was no ticket under the windscreen wiper so perhaps I am safe.

On the way back through the northern suburbs I picked up dog and cat food and then on to Brighton to visit the vet there and discuss options for seeing Shadow - she will call in next Thursday while doing the rounds up here. Once here she will assess Shadow and we can decide on our options. Shadow was of course full of vim and vigour when I got home and raced Seb and me down to the gate into the recreation ground so was clearly feeling rather full of himself today!

Carried on with a bit more painting of the architraves today - they are now a nice creamy white, though they need an additional coat to make it look convincing. I was using the Haymes paint today. It seems to be a little less watery than the Dulux and gives a better cover so only two coats will be necessary. I was surprised to discover I had two pots of gloss to be frank - I had forgotten about the Haymes. It is a warmer white than the 'Tealight' I was using on the windows out the back, so I will use it on the woodwork in the main house and the lighter colour in the modern extension. I have concluded, after many experiments with painting panels all different colours that an all-over gloss warm white will be the best approach in the older part of the house as it will be lighter and brighter. Meanwhile, since it is the architraves I am painting, Seb has a blob of white on his ear that was not there before!

I sat down to have a cuppa and read FB for a while and discovered a message from the boss letting me know there was a cottage to clean unexpectedly. So I downed tools and headed into town to deal with that before heading home once more. Once home, what with work being concentrated in the hall area, I had a go at sanding the ochre-tinted plaster on the hall walls. This has always annoyed me as watery limey streaks had covered much of the richer red and produced vertical dribbles down the face of it. I decided to try sanding it with a stocking over a sanding block, but it seems my stockings are too sheer for that sort of work, so I moved on to 0000 steel wool (also on the sanding block). This lifted some of the surface marks, but was not up to dealing with the filler the nice painter applied when he repaired the surface of the ceiling following the deluge that flooded the place a couple of years ago. I moved up to 00 steel wool and not only did it lift the filler, but it burnished the surface to a high gloss. I love the result so will now work over the whole lot before I coat it in some egg-based emulsion paint that I have the recipe for. That will give a clear semigloss finish to the surface and protect it against any marks from fingers, dogs and cats.

I was quite peckish after that lot so headed into town to get something to munch on (I settled for an icecream as it was quite warm today). As I backed out of the drive a passing car hailed me to let me know I had only one brake light. He suggested I call up later (in an hour) so he could pop a new bulb in for me, so I did. Unfortunately he did not get home for rather longer than that, but he has a wide verandah that had multiple DIY books sitting around so I amused myself reading those.

Once the bulb was replaced he and his wife invited me in for a cuppa and I have only been home for half an hour and still have not had dinner - or even started it!

Day in Hobart tomorrow which will be fairly full on, but hopefully not too expensive.

The Men's Shed was open this morning when I turned up hopefully with my door. Unfortunately they decided to 'help' me with the result the door ended up 10mm too narrow. I realised this after I had left so called back again and ran one of the offcuts through the table saw (without all that help this time) and was able to glue and nail it on to the side of the door where the latch will be attached. I concluded if I put it on the other side, then screwing the hinges in could become a problem given the weight of the door.

I left it there for the glue to dry as no-one needed that particular table and will pick it up on Monday, though not before stripping off a couple of layers of paint as, when I sanded the surface to level off the dowel I had poked into the hole where the latch was, some of the paint started coming up in big flakes, suggesting it is not terribly well bonded to the lower coats.

It was a bit of a team effort all round, as the handle obviously was not going to fit any more, so the hole was stopped up using a  bit of dowel that was lying around in the shed. I borrowed their filler for that and the various other holes where screws had been used in the past, and it is looking pretty ok now, pending the paint stripping. I will not bother to go all the way back to wood, but will take off the layers of modern paint that had not had a 'converting' base coat before they were applied.

Then on to sewing where I managed another two square centimetres of stitching before heading home.

A job scrolled over my FB page last night that was just the thing if I can get it. It is down at the Dogs Home where Seb came from - basically fairly menial - cleaning runs, assisting the vets, walking dogs etc. so I didn't bother giving them the full monty CV - just my history of animal ownership, my approach to handling dogs etc, and of course Shadow's saga of international travel. Included a photo of Seb with Smidgen to show them how he has settled in, and will await there results. They have had the courtesy to acknowledge receipt of the application which is always a nice surprise these days.

It is a casual post - filling in for staff on leave, busy periods, staff off sick, that sort of thing so should not interrupt the pattern of my life too badly. I will, however, need to get someone recruited to relieve in my other two jobs should I be successful. I am wondering if I should drop in while i am in town on Friday so they can put a face to the application or whether it might be better to stay 'doggo' unless they call me up. I think the latter.

I managed to get an appointment with the podiatrist on very short notice which was great news as it was the last one they had available this side of Christmas, so that is where I will go on Friday - check out the new Myers store (and get some socks) etc before heading back to the northern suburbs for dog and cat food en route home.

You might recall that when I moved in here the door to what is now the bedroom was in a rather poor state of repair - the bottom panels had been kicked in and the upper ones were split. I pulled it apart and used bits of it to repair the other doors and have since had nothing but a curtain over the opening. Actually the door into the study has yet to be re-hung as well but that is more a case of needing a good paint stripping. Anyway, looking at second hand doors they are all ridiculously expensive, the wrong size, wrong proportions, wrong configuration and so on. So I was rather thrilled when Heather decided her own bedroom did not need a door and would I like to have it?

I picked it up last night on my way back from the bank and left it there overnight with a view to taking it to the Men's Shed today. Carefully removed the hinges, measured the opening it is to go into, tried to work out how to remove the door handle (still no idea on that front) and merrily set off this morning only to discover the Shed was closed. Bother. So it is still in the back of the ute and I am still hoping they will be open tomorrow (and it will not rain too much tonight).

Meanwhile I decided to sugar soap the door surround and undercoat it. The first attempt failed due to years of accumulated hand-grime, but the second (involving steel wool) worked a treat and it has now had its first coat of undercoat. I will apply another since this plastic gloss seems to require many many coats to cover any streaks that might lurk under the surface. So tomorrow's sewing venture will not be likely to happen since I will have linen to stack as well as a door to saw (assuming the Shed is open). Failing that I will have to ask Heather to help me get it out of the back of the ute tomorrow as it will get warped if it stays out in the weather for too long.

I did get quite a bit done with the whipper snipper which made me feel a little less frustrated but as today was one of those days where half the sky is blue and the other half is black with pregnant clouds - the wind is gusting strongly and it is all a bit too hard - I stopped once I had cleared around the house and done the front yard. At least clearing round the house now gives me a clear view of the area where I plan to start building a path and the retaining wall for the back terrace, so that's a good start. Not much chance of regrowth unless we see any rain in the near future.