Join me on the red-eye

I stand before you a chemically altered woman.

The combination of a day of paint-stripping a door-frame (it says Nitromors on the label. In the Coffee House we call it Norovirus), hours of glossing, and a good bit of white spirit standing over the sink, and I am officially addled. Only the glory of Clinique eye-shadow is preventing me from appearing like a red-eyed madwoman on the school run.

(See that picture? I have made it blurry on purpose to communicate my optical distress. Honest.)

Poor Mr Coffee is off work with a very bad cold, and sits trapped in his attic bedroom, his door closed fearfully against the fumes. Occasionally he steps out into the new atmosphere of his home with the look of a man beseiged.

On Saturday, he hopes, he will be well enough to come to the shops to choose carpet. The thought makes this whole project seem worthwhile.

And then the realisation. I don't know what kind of carpet. I don't know what colour of carpet. I need help.

As you can see the Coffee House is a white house, and though red is one of our favourite colours, watching the Littlest Latte trip up the white stairs in her red coat convinced me that red carpet would look like we were trying to create Santa's Grotto the whole year round.

No neutrals. No neutrals, no way, no how. Our first house was completely painted in neutrals to try to play down the effects of the pink carpet fitted by the previous owner. When we shut the door on this house and climbed into the removals van, we made a pledge. No neutrals. Not ever ever.

Green is 'boring'. Mauve is odd. Blue is just wrong.

But maybe after another day or two of glossing, a bit of white spirit and a slug of Danish Oil to rub into the doors on the landing, my eyes will be so streaming with fumes that I will be unable to tell the difference between any of them.