exorcised

I first encountered the principle of people fitting blank hardboard panels over the top of panelled doors in my paternal grandmother's house. They have impinged little upon me since until we moved into this house, where all doors except the glas-panelled inner front door, the rear door, the half-glassed bathroom door and the inside of the door to the cupboard in which the boiler sits have been hardboarded. The inside of the door to the cupboard in which the boiler sits is panelled, but appears to be mounted upside-down with the longer panel-section at the bottom. As the wingpiglet's room will be the first room to be decoratively overhauled it was the first room to have its door's panels removed, a fun task involving the individual removal of over one hundred panel pins either from the hardboard panels or the door. As well as the damage done by half-glueing and half-pinning the panel on there are two holes for doorknobs, neither of which connect to a hole in which a standard pawl could be used as most of the house suffers those little roller things instead of proper door-retention devices, except the inner front door in which such a device has been fitted but the wrong way up, requiring non-intuitive rotation of the knob to release.

It's good that the wallpaper in his room has been removed before he learns to read as it was patterned with various nonsense phrases such as "peaceful tranquility", "calmness and serenity" and "oasis of calm". I generally find bare plaster covered with fragments of former paint-layers much less irritating.