How to Learn Patience

I know the feeling!

My first own home was a small 2-up, 2-down with kitchen extension; built in about 1850 by erecting four solid outer walls of local stone, roofing with slates straight onto the timber rafters (no roofing-felt in its time), and dividing the interior with woodwork.

The first-floor bathroom floor was of rough-sawn timber planks, not tongue-and-grooved, warped with age and left bare but full of tacks from years of lino or carpet. My Dad suggested the best approach was to remove or flatten the tacks, cover the wood with hardboard and seal that with polyurethane varnish, then I could lay mats or a rug over it.

Would that first sheet of hardboard fit properly...?

It was only by lying on my back in the doorway and looking up the wall I could see the room was totally out-of-square. Measuring showed the error to be about 6 inches in only 6 feet of floor width.

And so it went on with that house... I began to see what estate-agents really mean by "character cottage"!