Painting

My cousin died couple of years ago. She was a heavy smoker and smoked indoors with all the windows closed. When we had to sort her house out, we had to sugar soap every single surface in the whole place before the decorator came in. Even inside the fridge had a yellow layer and stank.

Up a ladder sugar soaping ceilings and walls with yellow-brown water dripping all over you and running down the walls was pretty grim. God knows what that stuff does to your insides. The yellow-brown sludge that came out of the carpet cleaner's machine was particularly alarming. Everything she owned stank of stale smoke. I imagine our job was similar to what pub decorators would have had to cope with years ago.

Yes, like pub walls used to be - yellow/brown. As an ex-smoker it was worrying what all that tar and chemicals has done to my insides. Between her dying and sorting the house out was a 15 month gap and even then it still stank after all that time every time you walked in. Removing all the contents and top to bottom cleaning and decorating wasn't enough. It still stank, but after the final job was done - getting the carpet cleaner in - you could finally walk in and not tell it was a smoker's house.

Talking of pub walls, in the 70s (before my drinking career started) the pub that would become my local had a new landlord. It was a really old pub with lots of character and characters, and very busy. Anyway, he decided to decorate it, and when finished everyone was up in arms because all the walls were stark, pure brilliant white, not the yellow/brown they were used to. Soon he had to redecorate to tone it down a bit and the new colour was close to the old nicotine stained hue that was there before.