Funny thing – before I moved back to Scotland, I’d never come across the habit of “Taping and Filling” – using Ames tape to seal the seams between adjacent sheets of plasterboard and then plastering and sanding the joint smooth. But it seemed to make perfect sense – after all, why should we pay for plasterboard and then pay some highly skilled bloke to spend days plastering it?

That was then. This is now, and I’ve discovered that by the time you’ve taped, filled, sanded and then repeated the process three times to get a completely smooth finish, you’d be better off in time and money getting the damned plasterer in in the first place. So that’s our lesson for when we move on to upstairs. Assuming of course that we can find a plasterer…