This weekend's progress in the Kitchen

This is how the kitchen looked at the start of the weekend. We have a sink at last, not plumbed in yet.

Various random bits of old worktop.

And Peter's tea making corner all installed.

By the end of the weekend we have running water and drainage.

Dishwasher fitted and some of the doors installed.

The island unit has been painted and installed. What do you think of the colour? We took a lot of time to choose it, I think it works, but would value your comments. The rest of the units will be painted off-white. I think the old black bench tops look good. I hope the unit will look as good with the rimu bench tops. Unfortunately it is going to take quite a while before we can afford them.
Peter could not wait to get in there and do some cooking. I could not wait to taste the resulting casserole. It was really worth the wait.

A little bit of luxury

At the supermarket this weekend I found some small tubs of luxury. Spreadable Lurpak. I love Lurpak butter. Usually, you can only buy the blocks of Lurpak over here. It is too hot to leave it out of the fridge and cold butter never spreads well.

Modern Homemaking

My latest Trade Me bargain is a handy guide to Modern Homemaking, dated 1967. I love old how-to-books, they are great for just browsing through finding pearls of wisdom. For example - "The modern washing machine is very useful for freeing the housewife to be available to complete other tasks." Like sitting in the sun with her feet up I hope.
There are some interesting colour plates with decorating suggestions. Notice the pine cladding in the above picture and the weather boards on the side of the bath below.

Day three, four and five of the kitchen makeover.

Day three - Things are moving on. The walls have been scrubbed, painted, sanded, filled and painted again. The fridge housing is complete and ready for painting.
Peter even managed to get his cook books in to see how they would look. I was tempted to paint right over the top of them.

The jack-in-the box man in the corner has put up all the splash back wall boards.

Day four - Things have slowed down, Peter is back at work. All that got done today was the undercoating of the wall boards. I had to get rid of all the uncovered pine, it looked to much like a 70's sitcom in there.

Day five - No pictures to cover this one. The electrician returned and connected everything up again. We are cooking with electricity again.

Art Deco weekend hits the streets of Napier again

Art Deco weekend arrived again. Art Deco dressed people appeared all over Napier.
They were even turning up at the farmers market on Sunday morning, arriving in style.

I suspect I would have ended up arriveing in the car below.

Very early morning flight - never again

My eldest has been visiting for a couple of days. This morning he was flying off back to University.
His flight was at 6:40am, which did not sound to bad. Until I worked out to get him there on time I had to get up at 4:30am. Never ever again. The upside was being able to take some cool sunrise snaps.

Day two in the kitchen makeover

Day two and the old kitchen is gone. The new one has started to move in, complete with an island unit that resembles a packing case. Hopefully the finished island will look a little less like a packing case.
Holes in the floor that the cats disapeared into, much to Peter's suprise, and emerged covered in cobwebs, thats the cats of course not Peter.
Cupboard doors and drawers have been painted.
The electrician arived and cut holes all over the place, pulled lots of cables around, disconected everything and left saying see you some time next week. We have no cooker, no dishwasher, no sink and leaky taps. More pics tomorrow.

My kitchen or lack of it

Stage one - Emptying the cupboards, isn't it amazing what you find tucked in the back of there. And how much stuff you have that you don't need. I took a whole box of stuff to the charity shop. And came out of the shop with a pair of inline skates and a waistcoat. The inline skates for my 17 year old and the waistcoat to use for dress up at my youngests drama class.
Stage two - Removing the old. Its amazing what a big room our kitchen is when you strip it all out. Peter still managed to keep a space for his kettle and tea pot.
We are keeping some parts. The very small looking cupboard carcass above is going to become an island unit in the middle of the kitchen. The shelves in one of the carcasses are going to be pulled out, stripped down and used as work bench tops in part of the kitchen. They don't look good now, but they will when finished. We are getting the rest of the work benches made up from recycled rimu at the building recyclers, hopefully.

The noise outside my bedroom window

Autumn is almost here and the cicada are making a lot of noise, right outside my bedroom window.

Goodbye Phil

Ever since I can remember the radio series The Archers has been part of my life. I remember my Granny listening to them when I was tiny and my Mum also. When I left home to go to college I started listening myself. Each weekday I try to catch them on the BBC iplayer. Part of my link back to the UK. Today out of the blue while listening to Fridays episode Jill came home to find Phil dead, asleep in this chair listening to Elgar. I know this is just a radio show, and that is what makes drama drama. And it was a wonderful way to go if you have to go. But so much of a shock for me. Of course I had to google what was going on, to find out the actor who played Phil for over 60 years, Norman Painting, died in October. Every Archer's fan in the UK probably knew this. I did not, hence the shock. I basically just wanted to say that I for one appreciated his work and enjoyed having his character as part of my life for so long. So goodbye Phil Archer/Norman Painting and thank you.

The mission 2010

What a beautiful way to spend an afternoon, sitting on a hill side overlooking Napier listening to cool blues tunes. Even thought there seemed to be a human gannet colony in front of us.Part of the fun of the Mission Concert is people watching. This year did not disappoint. From the guy who was vogue dancing to the girls on a hen night, the pictures of which I definitely can't publish.

Another part of the fun is the wonderful picnic that Peter spends all day cooking.

There were lots of girls in sparkly dresses.

Lots of bros in 'fros.

Wonderful atmospheric sunsets.

And a lot of excellent music, loud singing and wild dancing (and that was just me). It was a bit disconcerting that the three St Johns ambulance people, complete with strecher and defibrilator, came and sat on the hill beside me. I think they were just enjoying my dancing. Peter thinks they were just waiting for me to fall over, roll down the hill and break another few bones. Thankfully I stayed upright and in one piece. Unfortunately, I did not get any videos of Peter dancing it was too dark, maybe next year.

You have to look here

Go and have a look at this post, it is very, very funny The mystic Cat at Three Buttons.

What better after a very hot friday - a wine slushy

Today in Napier the temperature hit 35 centigrade. Very, very hot. As it is Friday I was looking forward to a nice cool glass of savy (Sauvigon Blanc to the rest of the world) in the evening. When I got the shopping home I put the wine straight in the freezer. Wine connoisseurs should stop reading now. By 8pm we had wine slushys. You do have to be very careful how many of them you drink or you could end up like this!

Well actually the above photo was taken before the wine. He just likes to get his head into all the pictures.

The Mission concert 2010 is ...........

Rather appropriate as this is my 50th year too. Artists appearing tomorrow include The Temptations, The Drifters, A Supreme, the Miracles and Martha and the Vandellas. It will be a good party night. Peter has already been watching the Temptations dancing and is perfecting his moves.

The almost before pictures

Before Peter rips it all out saws it up and reconfigures it I thought you should see some pictures of the kitchen as it is now.
Not a totally before picture because we have already started work on the kitchen.
Last year we ripped out the old ugly pantry and replaced it with nothing at all.
The base units will all be painted off white apart from the island unit, which will either be green or blue. Which one do you think looks best. I prefer the green. Which leads me to have to say this, and I am really sorry to all you born and bred Kiwis, but I will be so glad to get rid of that horrible grey, brown elephant colour which seems to be a big Kiwi favourite. When we moved into this house, the hall, the kitchen and the sitting room were all painted the same horrible browney grey. By this time next week it might be gone.