DIY Home Remodeling Project

Week 14

I spent a couple of days emptying the old kitchen cabinets. I put most things into plastic boxes and took them to the garden. This wasn’t the most sensible idea I’ve ever had – by the end of the week the plastic boxes that contained food were full of ants and slugs and other crawling creatures. They even crawled into the food containers that I thought were properly sealed. So I had to chuck away lots of packs of organic grocery products..

Some things had to be put in the spare bedroom which I didn’t want to do but I had the choice between filling up the office again with boxes or utilising the spare bedroom.

Then we started to rip apart the kitchen: uninstalled the current units, removed the wall tiles, took up the laminated floor, removed the ugly ventilating system etc.

Currently we have no kitchen – although we kept the sink unit so as at least to have fresh water. We’re living on sandwiches, microwave food and takeaways. The new sink unit won’t be arriving till the end of July.
We already have some of new base units –  so we might do something with those temporarily.

I’ve also researched and sourced the appliances. We needed to get an oven, a hob, a waste disposal, a chimney hood and a fridge.  They should arrive in two weeks time. I also ordered a new tap, new stainless steel sockets and many hardware fittings. I ordered everything online.

To be honest we didn’t work very hard last week on our home improvement project. Not only because we have other work commitments to fulfil, but there seems to be so much work to do upstairs that it’s easier to escape to our office down here. Out of sight – out of mind… It feels almost restful to do other work -a change is as good as a rest I suppose…

I asked the parquet floor layer to do the job at the end of July. He’ll come next week to look at the opened-up space and see how much work he’ll need to do. I should also find a plasterer to skim over the gaps where the removed wall  used to be; the old doorway  to the kitchen(which we still have to fill in) and over the places where we removed those useless dado rails. I’ll also need to find a plumber to move the radiators to a different location or we may do it ourselves. I might ask the builder guy who works on a kitchen project I’ve designed for a client – he seems decent enough and quite competent and he is trained as a plumber. Although I’m yet to find a builder who works conscientiously, so we shall see.

I have taken some photos during this remodeling project –  I’ll add a few to my diary soon.