The finished article

Yesterday was a good day and we finally got the kitchen finished! I actually thought we had it in the bag last weekend, but the electrician came in the week and put a load of holes in the ceiling. Whilst he did fill them in, neatness was not his forte (to say the least). So I had the pleasant task of sanding them back and refilling them. Sanding’s a doddle to me – I stripped and sanded all the doors, some floors and the bannister in our last house. But sanding on the ceiling (isn’t that a Lionel Ritchie record?) is a completely different thing. The dust comes straight down but you need to look up to see what you are doing, so it ends up in your eyes, your nose and your throat. I thought I was going to have an asthma attack!

The dust settled on my hair and John said it made the peroxide uber-blonde, a bit like Debbie Harry. This pleased me greatly

Anyway, here it is! My lovely, shiny, new and fabulous kitchen! It’s been a month of hard graft, but it’s definietly been worth it:

And, that well-known essential item of kitchen furniture – the sideboard. On top of the sideboard is John’s vintage Bang and Olufsen Beomaster 900. It’s the first radio he ever bought around 5 years ago and has been obsessed with B&O ever since. He now has six radios, two steroes, one TV, various merchandise and another radio on the way! Lucky me. But as my mum said, he could spend it all on alcohol and womanising so I should think myself lucky.

Because we did the work ourselves, we saved enough money for these. I <3 <3 <3 the Smeggy so much! The canvas is a vintage advertising poster from my hometown that I had put onto a canvas. I love the way it makes it look like a desirable place for a family holiday, when the truth is soooo different.

We also had time for a bit of light retail therapy yesterday. I love charity shops so much, as you can’t go with a predefined list and end up with the most random and unexpected things. Yesterday we found this haul of vintage bottles from a tenner! The little brown ones are Bovril jars, so these will live in the kitchen. The rest are a mixture of local beers, minerals, poisons (!) and medicines (including magnesia and lung tonic!). They’re going to be spread across my landing, main bathroom and en-suite bathroom (two bogs – yes I’m posh).

Going to spend the afternoon in the park and enjoy a day of taking it easy. The bathrooms are being fitted all next week, so I’ll be back on the DIY merry-go-round in the blink of an eye.

DIY and I

I don’t know if I have ever told you, but John and I are pretty good at the old DIY. We moved into our last house in Sheffield three years ago and within 12 weeks had done the following (with help from tradespeople where necessary):

Knocked down and rebuilt internal wall
Stripped all plumbing/gas and boiler out
Rerouted/replaced plumbing/gas and boiler
Replaced all electrics
Exposed two chimney breasts
Had chimney sewpt (off a real chimney sweep – I as very disappointed as they don’t actually climb up it!)
Repaired the roof
Replaced internal door with reclaimed doors, which I stripped and waxed
Removed the mini mountain of woodchip wallpaper on every surface
Replastered all walls and ceilings
Installed kitchen
Hung new skirting board
Added spotlights and pendant lights
Installed new bathroom
Carpeted house
Laid reclaimed parquet floor in kitchen
Painted all the house

We finished at 3pm on Christmas Eve 2004, and had John’s folks over for Christmas the next day! I even managed to cook the whole dinner by myself too! As you can see, not only had we done so much, but in record speed too! We don’t have many pics of the progress we made (didn’t really have the time!) but here’s a ‘before’ one of John in manky old kitchen

John’s in the middle of renovating the chimney breast with an angle grinder. It was covered in plaster and tiles so that all needed removing. It was so dusty that he ended up in hospital with an asthma attack that evening

But the hard work was worth it!

Thankfully, the new house is soooo much easier to tackle. Nonetheless, I think all this hard work has given me the DIY fear. This weekend as been set aside for the final push on the kictchen, which has involved a fair bit of work, but nowhere near as much as our last one (the pics say it all). So all weekend is going to be spent painting, unpacking, putting shelves and pictures up, and I am dreading it. Perhaps I am a lot more tired this time round – last time I was at the start of my PhD, and now I’m so close to the end that it’s tantalising. Perhaps seeing some of the flaws on our last house when we moved out has made me question my DIY abilities, as I am a total perfectionist. Or perhaps I just now really hate DIY. Whatever it is, I am not looking forward to this weekend, and am going to be demanding cups of tea and biccies all day long to get me through it. Think of me up those stepladders – drill in one hand, paint roller in the other – when you’re having fun this weekend

The first weekend off since?

Yet again I have been rubbish at posting, but for that you can blame the boyf. He has been relentless with the DIY drive, the majority of which seems to fall upon me (“I don’t know how to hold a paintbrush Flissy”). Anyway, the results can now be seen. Our lounge is now complete and is looking rather fab.

I have a lovely place to work, which is very important when you’re home-based. In the last house I faced a blank wall and now I have a fab view to boot!

But the thing I love the most is the view out of our bedroom window – it’s very special.

I’m thinking of selling this shot to the Pudsey Tourist Board if there is one (if there isn’t one, there should be), as Pudsey is very underrated.

To be fair to John, he has been working hard. He spent the past two weekends taking out the kitchen and putting it back together. There was a reason for this. The kitchen had an island unit which housed a gas tumble dryer. To accommodate the outflow from this stupid dryer, the whole kitchen floor was raised up by NINE INCHES, so you had to step up to the kitchen. Not only that but the stupid unit meant there was nowhere to put a dining table. So the island unit and the raised floor had to go! This meant:

stripping the kitchen out
removing the laminate floor
removing the floorboards
cutting out the frame which supported the raised floor
dropping the plumbing
dropping the power points
re-routing and killing some gas feeds
laying new floorboards
re-laying the laminate
re-fitting the kitchen

All this work just to fit in a dining table! It’s fair to say that I like my food, but this was excessive. I hate bad design with a passion, and this was the most poorly designed kitchen I had ever seen in my life! John’s dad’s a joiner so he helped with the re-fitting. When he saw the state of the kitchen design, he did that tradesman thing of sucking the air over his teeth whilst grumbling about shoddy workmanship (“bloody nailguns” – a no no for joiners, apparently). Anyway, they both worked hard, as this pic proves.

In non-house news, we have a new toy!

It’s a 1972 (tax free, yeah baby) MGB GT, and it’s John’s pride and joy! He’s not let me have a weekend off DIY in two months, but now he’s said it’s okay to down tools. We’re taking it for a spin to Whitby later, so I should be able to take some great photos – it’s glorious today!

Hopefully by the next post, I should have some nice crafty pics for you. I have just started Mummy’s Christmas present, but 2cm of knitting isn’t really worth the effort of even clicking the shutter button. I’d better move fast – there’s only 79 days until Christmas and this is present number one on the knitting list…