80% done, 20% still to go, and that 20% will take 80% of the time. Nothing much happened over the weekend, bar some plastering on Saturday (Day 4). On Sunday, Day 5, dinner at Chez Strange Land looked like this.
(Description: Four bowls of pumpkin soup, each with a teaspoon of sour cream in the middle, four glasses of water, four side plates, all placed very close together on a small table, bread and butter and a breadboard perched on a standard size chair drawn up alongside the small table.)
There was nowhere to sit other than the children’s table. On Saturday night, we fired up the barbie, and sat outside, but it was too cold on Sunday evening.
Today, there has been… progress.
I took this photo just a few moments after the tradies left for the day. The bench is in, the cupboards and drawers have handles, the sink is secured, the dishwasher is back in place and all hooked up, we have running water.
(Description: Long kitchen bench, darkish patterned grey, off-white cupboard doors with vertical grooves, wooden lip at near end of bench, dishwasher, sink, stove, down to corner with above bench cupboards and a microwave cabinet. Dirty and dusty, with random objets d’mess about the place.)
On the other side of the kitchen, the pantry is in place. Those open shelves are for my recipe books. And wine glasses.
(Description: Tall off-white cupboards. On the top layer, four doors, and one set of open shelves. Underneath, six doors.)
Best of all, the stove is in place. Gas hob, electric oven. It’s 800mm wide, so it has a good sized oven. I wanted an oven big enough to cook 60 biscuits at a time, or a leg of lamb and a large tray of roast vegies. This one seems to fit the bill. A 900mm stove would have been fun, but our space is limited. The 800mm oven was a good compromise. Tomorrow I will test it, with Anzac biscuits.
(Description: Steel stove. Gas hob with five rings, large oven with standard controls – bake, grill, fan bake and so on.)
So that’s the 80%. The remaining 20% is a flue for the rangehood, and a bulkhead to go at the top of the cupboards at the end of the kitchen. We weren’t fussed about having one, but our designer was very keen on reducing the perceived length of the kitchen, so we decided to trust his judgement. A tiler is coming in tomorrow to do the splashback, and patch the hole in the slate floor where the new bench does not quite cover the footprint left by the old kitchen, which is … obvious.
(Description: L-shape of old red bricks, showing through grey slate floor.)
Once the tiler is done, it will just be a matter of putting everything back. Simple, surely!
I promise one further post when absolutely everything is done, telling you what decisions we made, and why. On the 80 / 20 rule, that should be in about 10 days time.
Earlier posts in this series: Day 1 – The problem, Day 2 – Deconstruction, Day 3 – Frustration
