I got into a few scrapes over the weekend. In fact I was completely floored. At one point I was lying face down on the ground, covered in dirt, wondering what I'd got myself into.

Suffice it to say, it's not easy removing underlay from the floorboards. I've spent most of the weekend on my hands and knees with a metal scraper, trying to get up a carpet that was probably laid when Jesus was a boy. Or when Lisa was a girl. Either way, I've had an Axminster to grind all weekend, and I'm knackered.

Having bought the sofas on Saturday, I spent the rest of the morning clearing a bedroom at the new flat in which to store them while we have the living room redecorated. I then decided I should get the carpets up before the painters move in. That took most of Saturday afternoon and all of Sunday morning. I've never inhaled so much dust. If underlay is made of asbestos, I'm a dead man.

The result is that the hallway and living room are now carpet-free and thoroughly scraped (if a little dusty), leaving the way clear for the sofas to be delivered on Tuesday and the painters to start work on Wednesday. I've decided to employ the same firm that decorated Lisa's Mum's new flat. They seemed to do a good job, and they bring their own sandwiches. I'm not on first name terms with them yet though. They insist that I call them Mum & Dad.

Lisa's currently browsing the Dulux website (which is a miracle as it means she's not on Facebook), and is doing her best to choose the kind of colour scheme that would make Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen proud. We're tempted to do Amelie's bedroom in Raspberry Diva, but Lisa's concerned that if we have another child, it might be a boy, and if he's forced to share a pink bedroom, he could be scarred for life. That's if living with Amelie isn't enough to tip him over the edge.

Having scraped a living on Sunday morning, I then headed up to Lisa's Mum's in the afternoon to sort out a few teething problems with her flat. It basically involved pressing a button on her freezer and re-tuning her TV, but I felt fully justified in accepting a treacle tart as payment. She's only been in the sheltered housing unit since Thursday, but already it's looking like a hotbed of romantic love. She'd barely stepped out of her front door on Saturday before she was propositioned by an ageing Casanova who took her hand in the on-site shop, and invited her up to his flat. That was followed by an offer from a female resident to discuss excursions with the menfolk. Her initial reaction has been to run a mile from every proposal and avoid people like the plague, so if things carry on like this, it'll go one of two ways: she'll either be married or housebound.