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Tag: renovation

  • Easter Weekend 2012

    How was your four-day holiday weekend? Relaxing? Mine wasn’t. The Snook and I were pretty much flat-out the whole time. The Great Kitchen Renovation is/was scheduled to start Tuesday, so our main goals were to clear out the old cupboards and set up a temporary kitchen in the dining room. This also involved cleaning out two offices and three closets so we’d have space and boxes to actually put everything. I gave away a lot of old appliances (popcorn popper, jaffle maker, bread machine) that we don’t use anymore. (Incidentally, if anybody is interested in a LitterMaid, let me know.) The end result is an empty kitchen, ready to be demolished TODAY!

    Official Kitchen “Before” Photos:

    Kitchen Reno - Before Kitchen Reno - Before Kitchen Reno - Before

    And here’s our temporary kitchen setup in the dining room. We’ve got a dual-burner hotplate (courtesy of Ma Snook) and a combination microwave/convection oven.

    Temporary kitchen

    The biggest problem is really the lack of water. We’ll have to wash all dishes in the laundry room or the bathroom, which is a massive annoyance. Theoretically the new cabinets should be in by the end of next week, but we won’t be able to move food prep and dishwashing back into the kitchen until a week after that (when the stainless steel benchtop and sinks go in). So we’ve got at least three weeks in this setup. Fortunately we spent the last two weeks building up our freezer stocks, so we’ve got a couple dozen meals in there that can just be reheated. There are also plenty of restaurants in our area, so we can always go out if we get bored.

    As if all that wasn’t enough, we crammed a lot of other stuff into the weekend too. I spent half of Saturday manning the Knitters Guild display at the Easter Show, which was mostly boring (though I did get to visit my prize-winning socks). I managed to cut and do most of the sewing on a new dress for myself – my first ever sewn without any help! It’s the Colette Parfait. I’ve run out of black thread, so I can’t quite finish it just yet. It still needs buttons, pockets, and the zip. I’m really pleased with it though. Lastly, we managed to squeeze in a trip to the new IKEA over at Tempe. We’d heard that some chairs we were planning to buy might be on sale, but when we got there we discovered they were the wrong colour. Instead we wound up buying a mattress! They were 20% off, and we were planning to get one later this year. Good timing. The delivery guys were actually able to bring it over the same day, so we were able to sleep on it last night. It’s awesome, but still slightly weird. I’m sure it’ll take some getting used to. Everyone has told me that memory foam is going to be LIFE-CHANGING, so I’m pretty pleased at the bargain.

    And now it’s Tuesday, and I’m working from home so I can be here when the builders arrive this afternoon. Smash! Let’s do this.

  • Kitchen Update

    You’d think I’d know from watching all those episodes of Grand Designs that renovations never go as fast as you think they well. This process is just GLACIAL. We had the “Check Measure” guy out to do detailed measurements of our kitchen a few weeks ago. He then took those away to make an exact plan. (Apparently the previous one was too vague, and they have to be certain everything will fit before they can build the cabinets.) Then we had to approve all those plans. Now we’re waiting for the actual project plan that will tell us when everything is finally going to happen.

    We’ve been crossing some things off the To Do list though. We managed to pick out, purchase, and pick up the tiles for the floor. (Full-bodied porcelain tiles in black and white are surprisingly hard to find! I guess more people want their kitchens to look like Roman villas than 50’s diners.) We also got the builder out to give us a quote on extending one wall. And last weekend, we got our appliances delivered from Harvey Norman. We were going to wait until right before construction, but what the hell! I’d rather start using my massive new fridge right now.

    Old and busted

    Old fridge

    		 New hotness

    New fridge

    Yep, the new fridge is set up in the dining room. It won’t actually fit in the old space in the kitchen til we tear stuff out, so that was always going to be the case. The refrigerator compartment is a bit bigger, but the freezer is HELLA bigger. More than double. We are giddy with the possibilities. (The first thing we did after we plugged it in was ride to Establishment 218 and buy $150 worth of meat.) The new microwave has also been put to work early. However the faucet, dishwasher, and rangehood are still sitting boxed up in the corner, and will be for the foreseeable future. COME ON, HARVEY NORMAN. LET’S DO THIS.

  • New Things

    Caramel BobI spent Saturday morning at my hairdresser getting new hair. I was tired of the red, and I was sick of the length. I needed something different. My usual stylist Desireé was booked out, so I had an awesome new Kiwi guy named Carl. Carl spent FOUR HOURS taking the red out. He did a full head of foils, and then another colour in-between, and then a third colour once the foils came out. Then he cut about half of it off, changing Big Red into the Caramel Bob. I love it! I feel grown-up yet funky.

    Chicken FeetToday I headed to Marigold for yum cha with Steph and Eva and a bunch of friends. It was fantastic! Noisy and chaotic and packed, but fantastic. I ate everything. I even felt brave enough to try my very first “phoenix talon” (i.e. chicken foot). I KNOW! I just repeated to myself several times that it was just a funny-looking chicken wing. The sauce was delicious, and it was mostly gelatinous yumminess (with a fair few bones to spit out). I also had my first ever piece of tripe, which was probably more confronting (in terms of texture). I celebrated my bravery with some yummy desserts such as mango pancake and egg tarts. It was a magnificent feast!

    Tonight, the Snook and I headed off to Alexandria to mooch around the homewares stores and get ideas for our kitchen renovation. On the way home, we stopped off at Bunnings to cross a long-standing item off my House To-Do List: new toilet seats! We have two toilets, and I actually like the style quite a lot. But the seats! They’re flimsy old plastic with horrible chips and stains on them. We picked up some beautiful new ones and Snookums had them installed within minutes. The new ones are stylish, sturdy, and pristine white. It seems like such a small thing, but having these in my bathroom really does make me feel happier! Here’s the Before and After…

    Toilet - Before Toilet - After

  • Induction

    “Is Induction Cooking Ready to Go Mainstream?” The Snook and I decided some time ago that our new cooktop will be induction. We tried out Amy’s some time ago and really liked it. The only holdup is that we’d like to get the countertops done at the same time.