Focus has been almost entirely on the garage over the past few months. Meanwhile, in the house skirting boards still need to be fixed, additional coats of paint need to go on, shelves need to be put up, pipes to be boxed in, towel rails fixed in bathrooms, kitchen needs to be finished, utility room massively sorted, plus plus plus … so just a few things to keep me busy .
I decided during my May and June trips to get at least a couple of house jobs done, especially ones that would mean either: we could move forward with the next step or that living in the house in August (when will be more than just one person there) would be a bit more structured!
kitchen
First priority, getting the dishwasher working. I’d initially been waiting until the integrated door was fitted (and for that to happen, it needed to be painted). Whilst I did get the door looking good, I decided the fixing it in place could wait a bit longer – just need to be careful when we open the door. My life was immediately transformed, as I hate washing up – especially with the makeshift worktops and it’s just been so nice to be able to shove everything in and press the button. Dishwashers really are brilliant things.
Next up was getting the small under counter fridge fitted in and turned on. We decided that we would initially try without having one in the kitchen itself, but just have a large fridge freezer in the pantry. I have always lived with a fridge freezer being just outside the main kitchen (in a pantry) – that’s how my parents’ set-up is, and how it also worked out in my previous house. However, in Saorsa, because of the U-shape of the kitchen, it just goes too far beyond the kitchen ‘triangle’ layout to work efficiently. We’d deliberately left an option to change our minds in the kitchen, and so I found a brand new under counter fridge on eBay that someone changed their mind about (and so it cost me half the price of a new one), and slotted it in to the gap. Fortunately my brother had warned me that even the very shallow metal brackets (that you use to create these empty gaps for appliances) can be sufficient to stop the appliances from slotting in – and so it turned out! A lot of huffing and puffing, unscrewing and rescrewing brackets later, and the fridge slotted perfectly into place. Having the milk for tea there again makes a big positive difference.
Then after a final alignment of the ends of the kitchen runs, I got the tongue and groove boards fixed in various places. Undercoat and a couple of coats of satinwood paint later, it’s all ready – at some stage – for the templating to be done for the worktops. One day may even get round to painting the other kitchen doors, putting the plinth on and having a shelf on top of the ‘bar’ unit.
bedroom
Like the kitchen ‘bar’ unit, the bedhead in our bedroom has been a bit of a long time in the making! Finally got all the tongue and groove boards fixed in place, and then – the biggest excitement – I fixed some Shaker style wooden pegs into the back of the structure so that we can easily hang our clothes up. I’m determined to avoid bedroom chairs that too easily get piled with our clothes.
I was hoping I would get away with painting it the same colour as the skirting boards, but against the (fairly loud!) headboard the colour doesn’t work. Final coat of paint will have to wait for next trip.
Still a few other things to do in the bedroom – including a fair amount of wardrobe/drawer space, skirting boards, mattress divan cover and a roman blind for the east side window (just to block the direct sunlight from piercing eyeballs as the sun comes up on sunny mornings). But it’s all getting a bit more sorted.
utility room
There’s always quite a lot of different things going on in this room and, as it’s a pretty small room, it’s very easy to get to the point that so much stuff has been dumped it’s fairly difficult to open the door. Didn’t have much time left to make major progress, but I did manage to re-make one of the basic shelf units we’d brought up with us many months ago. The two units had served as very inadequate and messy shoe racks, wobbling towards the middle of the room. In its re-made state, the first of the new ‘proper’ shoe racks now sits neatly behind the door, with shoes slotted in much more satisfactorily. I ran out of time to fix the second one that will sit alongside it, but first job next trip. One day we may even get round to painting it and boxing in that whole wall – don’t think that will be for quite a while though yet!
