I am a legend in the redecorating world, the sort of woman that B&Q has wet dreams about and Laurence Llewlyn Bowen writes odes to. In the first flat I owned I repainted at least once every 6 months experimenting with colours and effects until guests were dizzy from the ever changing vistas. Some of the schemes were a success, the deep green in the bathroom was serene and restful but the honeysuckle yellow and orange blossom in the living room did little more than attract flies throughout the summer. I used a high gloss paint of such density and viscosity in my bedroom that the friend painting the walls nearly passed out from the fumes but the finished wall was cool and deliciously slick to the touch.

Some friends save redecorating for times when really they should just be cleaning. Unable to motivate themselves to wield a hoover and dust rag on a weekly basis they allow clutter, debris and dirt to gather first in corners and then later to encroach as far as the middle of their rooms. Finally, deciding something must be done, the gargantuan clean becomes an opportunity to rearrange their whole living space with the contants of one room after an another being pulled out into the corridor and then being replaced in new and interesting places. To be honest these people, if they had access to more disposable income, would simply move rather than clean or redecorate.

When I bought my second flat in the UK I did so because I felt I could see its ‘potential’, that lucrative and tempting but elusive quality that all good apartments should possess. It took more than three months of internal building work and over ten thousand pounds to realise the dream. I had the external wall to the outside shed (formerly the WC) knocked through and reset the room as a toilet, I demolished the overlarge bathroom with now redundant toilet and created a smaller wet room and as a result the kitchen was JCB propped and enlarged into an open plan dining/ cooking area with work space incorporated. The flat was re-dampcoursed and in my bedroom I had floor to ceiling storage and bookshelves built in. In the garden I dug up the long thin beds that bordered each side of an already long thin narrow sapce, laid a square patio, built a large raised grassed bed for sitting and reading on and pulled down the decrepit rotted high wooden fence on the left hand side of the garden and replaced it with a low wire fence to create a visually large open space across my own and the neighbours gardens. And then I moved!

When I moved to Turkey the first house I lived in offered little chance for personalisation the owner being very protective of his old and worn furniture and poor taste mint green interiors. We were bound to never hit it off and I moved out after 6 months. The second house was a much cleaner slate being older and in poorer condition but with an owner who was willing to charge a discounted rent in exchange for modernisation work being done. İ signed a three year contract and went to work, the concrete caves that constituted both the wc and shower room were retiled in white and beige, the hole in the floor squatter toilet became a nice neat white european style sitter. Both rooms were plumbed for hot water as was the kitchen and the whole house was repainted including the previously chipboarded and smoke damaged ceilings. The piece de resistance was the external paint though and after two weeks of hard work I was the proud resident of the only blue house in the village. Then 7 months later I moved (as Sezgin refused to live in sin with me in the middle of his mum’s village).

I have not made the same mistake in the house we are renting now, we have limited ourselves to replacing the flourescent strip lighting with normal household lights and buying some furniture. İ haven’t even chanced a fleeting glance at a paint brush in case İ am tempted – especially as the house is painted the most unattractive coral pink in most rooms. İnstead İ am satisfying my yen for household zen by planning extensions to the housethat will become our permanent home in October this year. So far İ am rearranging the current interior with new walls, doors in fresh places, building a 50m2 kitchen and a 40m2 bedroom – both with exposed beams and extending the balcony by 1.5m.And then İ want to build an outdoor wc, sun terrace and barbecue area as well as a natural bathing pool. Only minor improvements İ’m sure you’ll agree – let’s hope that this time İ won’t have to move!

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A blonde decided to redecorate her bedroom. She wasn't sure how
many rolls of wallpaper she would need, but she knew that her
blonde friend from next door had recently done the same
job and the two rooms were identical in size.

"Buffy," she said, "how many rolls of wallpaper did you buy for
your bedroom?"

"Ten," said Buffy.

So the blonde bought the ten rolls of paper and did the job, but
she had 2 rolls leftover.

"Buffy," she said. "I bought ten rolls of wallpaper for the
bedroom, but I've got 2 leftover!"

"Yes," said Buffy. "So did I."