I was happy with it. I thought it was finished.
Goes to show what I know!
I put it on the shelf and called it done.
Wayne walked past and tweaked it. A bit. Just a tiny bit.
And now its better.
All he did was bend out the points a bit and suddenly it was better. It was perfect!
Don’t you hate it when someone else can see something you don’t?
z
Now the thing is, I’m not sure about the colour… Don’t get me wrong, I love the colour of myrtle, I’m just not entirely sure its the colour benchtop I want in my kitchen… Maybe its cause I loved the look of my previous kitchen…
This is sort of what my benchtop would look like in myrtle. More or less. We don’t know how much ‘tiger’ or ‘fiddleback’ it might have in it till we sand it back.
I do like images I’ve seen of kitchens with white walls and cupboards and dark benchtops, but I think I’ve always loved the light wood better I think… and the myrtle benchtops I’ve seen in person are much darker than the myrtle benchtop above.
Here are a couple of photos of myrtle floorboards.
I have no idea why the floorboards are pinker in the top one but not so much in the second one. The point is that myrtle has a pinky/red hue and its a dark wood.
So, do I want that, or do I want the lighter look of tasmanian oak?
Here are some photos of tassie oak.
By the way, the floors in my house in Fentonbury were tas oak as well, but they’d been sanded and polished in the kitchen and dining room. In the bedroom I removed carpet in myself I found old floorboards which were worn. I didn’t sand them, just punched in nails and sanded a couple of rough spots, then gave it a few coats of water based polyurethane or whatever its called. They turned out like this. Love them best!
Thought I’d quickly share these photos of the birthday present I got Wayne this year.
I was looking through the old tool section of a local antique store when I saw this little beauty and just had to grab it. Its a heavy duty fan of some kind of machinery.
(We like getting eachother useless rusty things as gifts. Love it!)
I love the chippy paint and the rust. The photos suck, but hopefully I’ll get better photos of it when I put it up somewhere.
Don’t you think it’d make a terrific light fitting for the new kitchen?
Then again, its Wayne’s present, not mine. Maybe it’d look better on the garage wall!
z
A wall with seriously thick power lines in it.
And that’s the best thing that happened today.
This is how it went.
Yesterday the handyman had leveled the slab the hot water cylinder was to sit on. The electrician cut the power to said hot water cylinder since what we thought was cutting the power to it didn’t stop it producing hot water.
On the positive side, we didn’t have to go days without hot water.
I did manage to find an electrician, as you may have deduced.
Today the plumber arrived at 7.30-ish and started working on removing the vanity – so we could remove the bathtub, so we could access the wall behind it, so we could plumb in the hot water cylinder in its new spot. Nothing is ever simple.
At 8am the handyman and the plumber’s sidekick arrived to help remove the tub and do the other work lined up for them.
Handyman had to remove all the top cabinets from the kitchen and 2 windows, then put the new window I’d managed to find, which I drove down to the city to pick up.
Of course cast iron tubs aren’t that easy to move. It took the three of them a lot of hard work to move it out to the porch where it’ll sit till I can sell it.
Anyone wanna buy an original, large, clawfoot tub with all its feet and only 2 small chips in the enamel? If our bathroom wasn’t so tiny I’d have loved to keep it.
Anyway… it was all going smoothly… there was a hole in the floor where they had to cap off the bathtub drain, and a hole in the wall panel where they had to put in the hot water pipes, not to mention holes in the plaster on the other side, almost hidden by the fridge. I only noticed that after the plumber left.
Along with the fact that he didn’t put silicone around the vanity when he put it back in, left the hole in the ground for Handyman to fix and left the gate to the paddock open and the cover off the pressure pump.
What is it with these guys?
So, as I was saying, it was all going well till the plumber put the water back on. Then we had a fountain in the bathroom.
See, while I was out picking up windows he called to ask me which side the hot water was on. I said left. Meaning the sink. He meant the bathtub, where it was on the right.
What? Isn’t it like that in your house? Sheesh…. You’d think I was the only one with odd plumbing!
One minor flood and a ton of wet towels later, the hot water cylinder was plumbed in.
I even have water in the vanity again.
Meanwhile Handyman lets out a sound I could only interpret as not good.
Luckily the electrician was here to connect up the hot water cylinder so he had a look. He shook his head. He agreed. This was not good.
Turns out the power cables to the meter box run alongside the small window Handyman had just removed. There was no way to move them aside and they were right in the middle of where the new window was going to go.
Great. They’d totally stuff up my view.
Ok… now why did none of us even think that might be a possibility? The meter box was right there, staring us in the face… surely if we’d opened it we’d have seen the cables disappearing into the wall above it… sigh.
Decisions needed to be made. Redesign the kitchen and put the window to the one side of the wall or go through the process of moving the cables and meter box.
I said move the box.
So now the electrician has to fill out a form requesting work to be done, he’ll hear from the power company in about a week (if we’re lucky) and the job will get done in about 4 weeks (again, if we’re lucky).
Meanwhile I have 2 holes in my kitchen wall.
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| This is about where the work stalled… |
We put a tarp over the window into the mud room. That’s fine. Its an ‘inside’ window. Handyman put the small window back in.
Great.
On a positive note, the hot water cylinder is no longer on the front porch. Yeah!
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| See the cables in the window? OUCH. |
And I have this great metal grate which it used to stand on I can do something with.
So that’s where we stand right now.
We have a kitchen with a hole in one wall, no upper cabinets, bulkheads which still need removing and a ton of old cabinets in the casita. I’ll probably use some of those in the grooming room and laundry. Waste not, want not.
z
A few weeks ago I bought a replacement tap for our yard.
I got the wrong one. I didn’t know they came in more than one standard ‘yard tap’ size.
But it didn’t go to waste. I had this weathered bit of timber from an old gate or shed door, complete with a rusty hinge. I have no idea what it came off, all I know is that when I saw it in the scrap pile near the stable I grabbed it.
Like everything I collect, I knew it would come in handy one day.
I had drop shaped crystals. I had fishing line. I had crimping beads.
Most importantly, I had the tap and the board, complete with rusty hinge.
I put them all together and now I have a perpetually dripping tap… in the best possible way.
I haven’t found the right spot for it yet, but I love the look of it near the plants in the new flower beds.
z
Shared at
But I put the kitchen at the top of the dream make-over list cause its the room we spend a lot of time in, its the heart of the home and all that.
Plus, our oven stopped working over 3 months ago and I’m over not being able to chuck quick meals in the oven when its my turn to cook.
Not to mention that Wayne always hated our 54cm rental quality electric stove which seems to have no low heat setting on the hotplates.
So. We’re getting a new kitchen.
This is kind of how it happened:
The oven stopped working. I had a dish to bake. I gave it to the chickens.
I asked ‘Is it worth looking at fixing it?’
Wayne said ‘No.’
He was pretty emphatic. So, we decided to buy a new one.
I started doing research. I wanted a double oven. I love the handiness of having the two ovens. No need to heat up a big oven just to heat up pies for dinner…
We both love cooking with gas. I wanted an electric fan forced oven.
I wanted a bigger stove than the one we have now, 60cm.
I wanted a bigger, better stronger rangehood cause the under-cabinet one we have sucks.
Or doesn’t suck, which is the problem.
It took me months to make a decision and act on it.
Why you ask? Well… I looked at the kitchen and measured it and thought about it. Even if we left things exactly as they are, putting the new stove in the gap left by the old stove (the gap is big enough for a 60cm stove), I’d have to remove all the top cupboards to fit the rangehood. And it still wouldn’t fit cause of the window!
This is what our kitchen looks like now. I removed the cupboard doors on the left to make the kitchen look more open. There’s a window above the sink on the left which looks into the mud room (the small porch we enclosed). The window on the right is hard to look out so there’s no way to easily look out to the gate when you’re in the house and the dogs go bezerk in the yard.
I put small strips of melamine between the stove and the benchtop to stop food falling down into the gap. The corner cabinet hinges have both ‘dropped’ and the handle on one has come off and the I need to pack the holes with matchsticks to put the handle back on. We’ve gotten used to using our toes to open the door so I never bothered.
I hate the laminte tile sheeting on the walls. I hate the lino flooring. I hate the benchtop.
Other than that, its fine.
This is the other side of the kitchen.
Ignore the half chalkboard pantry door. Given that we’re redoing the kitchen I can’t be bothered trying to fix that stuff up.
This is the left hand side.
There’s a tiny entry way behind the first half of that wall – we keep the fridge in there and I’ve put in the cupboard I removed from the living room. Its now an extra pantry. Its a great walk in pantry. Its a dark and dingy room when have to come through to enter the house.
Cause in country houses you always come in through the back door.
The front door is on the opposite side of the house, nowhere near the gate or driveway.
Naturally.
This is the right hand side.
When looking for stoves, I found two I liked – the Belling and the New World. Both of those aren’t the exact models I was looking at, close enough though. I know 3 people who have a Belling and love it so that was what I was leaning towards.
When we went shopping we ended up with this:
Dont you just love it?? I do! We got it half price as its a floor model. Its a cream Euromaid.
*today the kitchen, tomorrow dado rails in the whole house!
I saw a man down the road who mills his own wood and has some minor species timber in his lumbar yard. I’m negotiating on some pieces of timber for the benchtop. I’m considering some 40mm planks of Tasmanian myrtle. Other options are eucalypt or blackwood. He says the myrtle is a better quality timber for benchtops and has an entire kitchen made out of it. Its a pinker/redder type of timber and I’ve always loved it.
So there you have it. I’ll be updating progress as we go along. It should be interesting. Wayne and I have never lived through this type of ‘invasive’ rennnovation before….
Lets see who survives…
z
PS. Feedback needed on my blog layout/look. Do you find the links easy to find/see? Do you think the type should be a bit bigger. Being a graphic designer I tend to go for the look I like. Small type looks neat but may not be so easy on everyone else’s eyes.
Yep.
You heard me.
Wayne, who always said miniature horses were a waste of space, good for nothing, etc, was the one who decided we were getting a miniature horse.
First, Wayne said we were going to SEE him.
Yep.
You already know how THAT goes…
Meet Cheeky. At least that’s what he’s been called till now. I’m sure he’ll have a new name soon.
One look and I was in love. He’s so tiny that all I want to do is pull him on my lap and cuddle him.
He wasn’t so keen on that. He hasn’t had much work done. He’s only had a halter on once before and he got it off. I bought him a new one yesterday and Wayne managed to catch him (with a lasso!) and we got it on him.
He wasn’t impressed.
But he needs to get used to being handled. I plan to handle him a LOT. We went up to see him twice today and Wayne worked with him a bit both times. Wayne really is incredible with horses. All animals.
This handsome fellow is his dad. Indy. The sweetest quietest stallion I’ve ever met.
(I’ve never met a stallion before, but he’s quiet, trust me.)
The plan is that little Cheeky has a visit from the vet next week during which he’ll say goodbye to some parts of his anatomy which he won’t need and which he’s probably very attached to, then he’ll be coming to live with us.
Its going to be interesting.
He’s about the same size as Romeo.
I’m so excited! I’ve always loved miniature horses.
z
Things have been crazy around here lately.
Holidays are meant to be time to rest, aren’t they? Wonder what I’m doing wrong…
The weather has taken a turn for the worse. Summer in Tasmania… It got windy, really windy. So windy the poodles were pinned up against the fence yesterday. Then it started raining. Its been windy, rainy, windy and rainy, sunny, windy, sunny and windy, sunny and rainy, any and all variations of that for 3 days now.
The ditch on the side of the driveway seems to be doing its job… we haven’t had a waterfall on the garden path. So far so good.
Herman Too has joined the other ducklings and I’m pleased to say we can’t tell which one he is. That’s great news as it means his limp is so much better we can’t see it any more.
I kinda miss having him in the bathtub and saying good morning to him every morning.
I don’t miss the stinky duck poop.
Things are moving along with the plans for the new kitchen (more on that in a separate post), and the retaining wall is mostly finished. Photos of that to come once the dirt settles and the rain stops.
Could be a while…
z
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