Home Improvement with Samuel Pepys

After 3 months of scaffolding, building and decorating works and the accompanying mess and disruption, I am feeling in need of a little perspective and where better to look for it than in Samuel Pepys' Diary. Here is the entry for 29 September 1660:  

All day at home to make an end of our dirty work of the plasterers, and indeed my kitchen is now so handsome that I did not repent of all the trouble that I have been put to, to have it done. 


This little gem comes from Pepys' Diary online from which I can also tell you that the average temperature for September 1660 was 13 degrees! There are apps for iPhone and iPad which enable to you to have a day by day connection with Pepys which is rather fun and much easier than attempting his diaries as a whole (although Claire Tomalin's biography is well worth reading). For completeness, last night (3 October 1660) Pepys "spent the evening looking upon the painters that are at work in my house". So did I.