Christmas for the Kitchen

Friday was like Christmas for me and the kitchen.  I had three parcels delivered to work, which were the fruits of my labour on eBay last week, in an attempt to spend my way back into love with the kitchen.

So I thought I'd share the beginnings of my collection of things for the kitchen that I love and Husband Features bares.  Grudgingly.

1950s Pyrex (Excuse the lack of tile grouting...)

Not sure why those pictures won't sit together nicely.  But you get the idea - beautiful 1950s Babycham glasses. Who knows what 50s delights will come next, stay tuned to find out...

Lost Your Kitchen Mojo? Tips to Get it Back. Sort Of.

I have not posted in a while.  Mostly because we are still working on the kitchen, and for various reasons, which I shall not go into on this blog, I have fallen slightly out of love with the kitchen.

However... I know that there is nothing I can do to fix the kitchen into something I love.  So I have decided that I am going to do the only logical thing.  I am going to SPEND my way back to love.  Throw money at the problem.  That fixes things, doesn't it?  

So I thought that there was no point in hanging around, and have gone right ahead and logged in to eBay, and purchased several delectable items with which I shall be furnishing the unloved kitchen.  The frustrating thing about eBay is that things take a long time to arrive, so until such time as my items arrive, the kitchen will have to remain unloved and unfinished.

Pictures of eBay obsessions to follow.  Further purchases likely also to follow.

Right, excuse me now.  I have shopping to do.

Hot Water Rocks!

It has been some time since I posted - as I have been too busy basking in the warm glow of central heating created by our new boiler...  (Actually, that's not quite true, as we've barely had the heating on - beign on the first floor, we're rather conveniently in a heating sandwich - so along with the weather having been so mild, we've used the heating very little).  It has been wildly exciting to have hot water on demand, not needing to remember to put he immersion tank on every night has been simply marvellous.

The arrival of the boiler has also meant a lot of changes for the kitchen.  More than will fit in one post, so I'll limit this one to the boiler, the development of which, I will communicate via the medium of photo...

So the pictures from the kitchen with all the old units were posted here.

The Kitchen



Naked Kitchen Wall



New Pipes In



Old Boiler



New Boiler

I am actually going to leave it at that for the moment, because I am having trouble uploading pictures with the blogger picture uploader... 

Rolling Out The Big Guns

Well, coat one of the usual paint stripper has had the usual results (see here).  So I have decided to roll out (what I hope will be) the big guns.

The Big Guns

This stuff promises that one coat can strip up to 15, yes FIFTEEN layers of paint.  But it wants 2 - 4 hours in which to do it.  Which is a shame, because it stinks like a motherf***er.  A cross between nail varnish remover ane (as Husband Features pointed out) Juicy Fruit.  

I am hoping that this in combination with some other state of the art equipment, will mean the job is a bit easier and less time consuming.  We'll see in four hours when I take it off... provided I haven't died in the interim of solvent abuse.

I will of course bore you senseless with the photos of the stripping in progress and the results once done.

Stripping... Again

I am not pretty sick of the smell of paint and varnish stripper.  Stipping seems to be a never ending job.  I have started now on the loo floor and skirting tiles.  Husband Features was in favour of stipping the crap off the loo floor (splashes of paint, carpet glue, general suspicious stuff), but not  in favour of stipping the skirting tiles - I think because they were such a big and time consuming effort in the kitchen.

I said I thought if we were going to do it, we should do it properly.  He says I'm on my own.  So I've got started with it - I pulled up the carpet and nastily stained underlay and have slapped the stripper on the back half of the (very small) room, and while the smell of the stripper is now like and old friend, it is also like an unwelcome old friend who has a bit of an odour problem and hangs around for too long being slightly ineffective.

I forgot to take a photo of the room before, but have managed to dig this out, which doesn't do justice to exactly how unpleasant the carpet is, as you can't see it that well, but as a before picture, it will have to do. 

The after pictures will follow - as the first layer of stripper is just about at the end of its half hour.

Bathroom Tiles and Scuppered Plans

It has been a frustrating few days in home renovation terms - largely because (it feels like) no home renovation has happened.

We had hoped that in this week off, we'd have the kitchen pretty much down.  Unfortunately, we have still not touched the kitchen.  We have no sink, no tiles have touched the walls, the hob is still not connected, no decision has been made about paint colour (though I think we're getting closer), we have not been able to leave the house to go to get the second half of the kitchen from Ikea and there is a bit of reconstruction work that needs doing on the windowsill (all the rooms have wide windowsills with the original red tiles - all painted over, or course - except the kitchen - in which the windowsill has been destroyed).

Hopefully the plumbers will be done by about 4ish (he has brought a friend with him today to get the job finished quicker), so after that, Husband Features and I are planning to get ourselves into double time, get ourselves down to Ikea to get the second half of the kitchen (although we've not quite worked out exactly what that's going to be yet, as the kitchen planner is temporarily not working).

Realistically, by the time we go back to work, I think it's unlikely we will have got much further than we are now.  Disappointing.

What we have discovered though (after I had a bit of a conniption about not getting anything done in the flat) is exactly what lurks underneath the delightful brown carpet in the loo and bathroom.

I think I mentioned before that I suspected that the skirting tiles in the loo room are the same red quarry tiles as in the kitchen.  A conversation I had with June - one of the other residents on the block though had made me hope that there might be black and white tiles under the brown carpet.  

Lifting the lovely brown carpet in the loo room revealed that the not only the skirting tiles, but also the floor tiles in there are the same red quarry tiles as in the kitchen.

Pulling back the brown carpet in the bathroom, however, revealed blue and cream vinyl/lino tiles, which are in a pretty grim state.  However... the hairdryer once again comes into its own, as a quick bit of tile heating and pulling back revealed some (very sticky) black and white tiles. Lovely.

I love the black and white tiles and I'd like to keep as much of the original features as possible - however I think black and white flooring might just scupper the plans I had been making for the bathroom...

Well, We are *Supposed* to Have Heating By Now

Husband Features and I have had the week off this week, to be flat renovation ACHIEVERS.

Instead, we have been to Bicester Village, I've been to Brighton and Husband Features has watched quite a lot of Red Dwarf.  

Our whole (let's call it) Achievers Plan was centred around us getting a boiler installed on Monday and Tuesday - along with the removal of the cursed immersion tank, the capping of the back boiler in the living room, the flushing of radiators, the removal of a gazillion unnecessary pipes and the connecting of the gas hob.

It is Wednesday (you might know that) and we do not currently have a boiler, and I have become increasinly more suspicious of our Boiler Man, with really no good reason (his sister broke her leg, he had to go to Manchester to help with the kids, so wasn't sure exactly which day he'd make it).  Having let us know he'd be here at 8.30 this morning, he has just turned up at 9.30 (he did let us know by text this morning that he'd be later than planned, but ignore that bit of information to enable me to feel more justified in my suspiciousness, if you please).

Aaaanyway, the big Achievers Plan centred around having the boiler installed at the beginning of the week, followed by productive trips to Ikea to get started on the other half of the kitchen, the tiling of walls, and the overall finishment of the kitchen to a level satisfactory enough for me to be able to whip up some sort of wonderous creation for our work National Baking Week bake off next week.  That is not going to happen. (Finishment is a word.  Honestly.  Look it up.  Ok, don't actually).

We can't plan for the second half of the kitchen until we know how much room the pipes are going to take up.  And more importantly, until we know what sink we're going to have.

Anyway, to top up on the renovation porn, I've taken some photos of random bits and bobs for your viewing pleasure (satisfaction is not guaranteed, I'm afraid).

The original state of the second side of the kitchen:

The second side now:

The lino/vinyl tiles we found under the cupboard (which must have come some time before the lino that's in the first picture).  Husband Features very cleverly removed these tiles with the help of a hairdryer (knew that hairdryer would eventually be useful for something).

Hopefully I will be add a boiler update later today.  More likely tomorrow afternoon. 

Tiles and Work Tops

Another thing we have done recently is made a decision on our kitchen tiles.  A couple of weeks ago, we bought 4 metres square of cream metro tiles.  We have been umming and ahing about the kitchen tiles since we started on the kitchen.  We started off thinking metro tiles, moved away from them, back again, away again and finally decided to bite the bullet and just get them.

Husband Features thought we should go white, which I thought might make the kitchen look a bit like a butcher shop - a bit cold.  But luckily Husband Features is not too hard to talk around.  So these are the tiles - Homebase cream metro wall tiles.  Homebase worked out the cheapest for these tiles - they were around £20 for 50 tiles everywhere else - so homebase was £4 a square metre cheaper.  Woo hoo.

And finally, for the moment, the work tops.  

Husband Features' brother is, rather handily, a chippy - so this weekend, he came over to cut the worktops to shape for us.  The kitchen does not have simple walls.  There is not a simple 90 degree angled corner and where there shoule be 90 degree angles, there are not, so the cutting is not a simple job.  He also cut the hob into the countertop for us.  

So here is the final product (when I say final, what I mean is the cut out counter top that is not yet properly attached to the units, the two pieces need joining together properly, they need to be sealed and treated and need a bit more cutting here and there):

 

Next step will be the boiler.  Lucky really, as the mornings are getting a bit chilly now.  Bring on hot water on demand and heating.