Hanging in there.

Just had quite a difficult few weeks there which left me with neither time nor energy for rambling on about my flat. Anyway, life is getting back on track so I guess I can get this little show back on the road too. But not until I've finished knitting my best friend's Christmas present and been home for the holidays. :)

Pancakes

I just finished a little project and am feeling all buzzy and wanting to tell someone, but it's after midnight so a quick post will have to do. (I also want to share the news before I have to look in the cold light of day and realise that some important part has gone wrong....)

Start with one crappy kitchen floor. The tiles should be a mix of three different kinds (with some plain ol' concrete thrown in for fun), set at different levels, and at least half a dozen should be sporting big cracks.

Mix up a half a sack of Solplan, bought on impulse the day before because the guy offered to deliver the lino and the sack for free that evening and the sack weighs a hefty 25kg. (I've realised that I'm much more decisive when faced with free delivery and a shop that's about to close and stay closed for the next two days, especially when my kitchen is going to be installed the day after that and I risk not having a floor.)

Note how much the Solplan looks like deliciously creamy hot chocolate. Note that lumpy hot chocolate is perfectly acceptable, but that lumpy Solplan is a pain in the ass and will bite you about half an hour down the line.

Start spreading. Spend far too long faffing around smoothing and spreading the Solplan (which is self-levelling) and thinking how pleased you to have taken on this little job yourself and grinding away the little gritty lumps of unmixed powder and spreading and smoothing and....

Realise that it's gone and set in the bucket. Ooooh yeah. I think the fact that I don't have a professional cement mixer and had to stir it all up with the pole that used to support my kitchen worktop didn't help. By the end, there were quite a lot of little lumps that I had to mash out and that slowed me down quite a lot. Result: when I went for the last helping of chocolate milk, it was more like a thick mousse that I had to apply like plaster. Lumpy plaster. And I ain't a plasterer. It isn't perfectly smooth by the door because it was too thick to self-level, but I think, and hope, that I've got away with it. I won't count my chickens yet, but even in the worst case scenario I would just have to take it up tomorrow and do it again and it really wasn't that painful an exercise. And look how lovely and smooooth my floor looks now!

In other news, I painted my kitchen and bathroom ceilings, and Monsieur Y. came round to fix the gas, which is no longer leaking, although the downside is that I can't keep the pilot light on my boiler lit any more. Very mysterious, because he was nowhere near the boiler. Cold shower again tomorrow I s'pose.

Don't know where to start

I've been back at home for a week and a half now, gradually coming back down to earth. I'm not great at being a house guest, so four weeks on couches and airbeds (albeit staying with friends who couldn't have been more welcoming) while simultaneously trying to manage the renovation and finish up at work and suffering from a rather sore post-bike-accident shoulder, wasn't particularly easy.

Now that I'm feeling a bit more chilled, I don't know where to start. So much has changed in the flat, and I'm so generally delighted, that I want to post a million photos and write a thousand words. Instead, I'm going to go and buy paint and a better roller and finish putting undercoat on the new plaster and plasterboard in my bare-naked kitchen and bathroom and not let myself get distracted from finishing my part of the renovating deal.

Although I guess I could post two little photos anyway:


And some quick pictures of the unforgettably awesome weekend in Brittany:




And note that my oven is still hanging out on my bedroom floor in my pre-kitchen-installation, living-in-one-room arrangement and that, if those brownies are better than the ones we had that night, they must be MIGHTY fine.

And finally, to say that yesterday was my last day at work. Freedom!!

Almost there.

I'm hoping to get back home tomorrow night, or Tuesday at the latest. Things have come on great bounds in the last week and I'm really delighted with how it's looking so far. A few things that haven't turned out quite how I'd imagined, but no disasters. And still lots of work of a patching/painting variety to do, of course, but that's for me to get stuck into.

They left the electricity and the water off again this weekend so paint stripping wasn't really an option (I had to make an epic kitchen-ordering trip to IKEA anyway and, to be honest, I wasn't really in the mood anyway) but I did remove the broken tile on the bathroom floor and prepare one of the old baseboard tiles to plug the gap.

Lots of photos to come (of the flat and of the fantastic weekend I spent last week in Brittany with friends from work - bliss :) ), but I don't have my computer with me at this flat so they'll have to wait.

Quick update

Very very quick.

Things seem to be going fine and now that the electricity is almost finished, it should be possible to see some progress soon. Fingers crossed.

In the meantime, this:

has become this:

This:

has become this:

This:

has turned into this:

and this:

Now they just have to put it all back together again...

And they're off!

Travaux started exactly a week ago today. I'm staying with various friends, on a variety of airbeds and sofas, so I'm pretty tired and email access isn't easy. Suffice it to say that I'm still hemming and hawing about kitchen lighting, and that I had to water my plants with bottled water at the weekend, and that having felt really quite disoriented by seeing my lovely home reduced to dust and broken plaster I'm now feeling an awful lot happier and really quite hopeful. Pictures to come as and when I'm able to upload them. :)

Exciting times

I've accepted a quote for all my travaux: looks like the dust and destruction could start as early as next week and, even more excitingly, that it could all be clean and beautiful and new a mere four weeks after that! I don't know what I'd do with a proper, functional, hole-free flat but it's a terribly enticing prospect.

I'm going to be spending this weekend finalising decisions about taps (so difficult!) and kitchen floors (so know what I want, so don't know exactly where to find it or what kind of material to choose) and windows and tiles and I'll probably find time to second-guess my thoughts about baths and sinks too.

Just in case there's anyone out there, here's a picture of three ways I might end up doing the high window I'm going to create between the kitchen and my dark, underwater bathroom.

Any thoughts? I know which picture I like best, but I have a feeling that might not be the best real-life choice. The proportions aren't anything like the same, but this is the kind of effect I'm looking for:

Picture: Apartment Therapy

Also, does anyone know about Kludi taps, specifically the Bozz? I've never heard of them but I saw them in BHV, which is a pretty reliable sort of shop, and I like the look of them, but I'm slight concerned that the url ends "...bad-bozz" and that I received a note from my neighbour today telling me off for keeping him awake by running my washing machine at 1am (yeah, I don't have a washing machine... yet) and he is called... Mr Bozza! Subliminal messages or mere coincidences?

Anyway, all of these things to ponder AND I need to drum up the enthusiasm to drag myself out to spend yet more time in the 6-and-a-1/2th circle of hell that is the IKEA kitchen department.

On that note, here's a flower for some cheerfulness. It's one of my long-suffering gardenias, flowering. Those poor babies have been sunburnt and overfed and burnt again and dried out (and, of course, appreciated for their hardiness and sheer stubborn ability to return from the precipice every time). Even after all that, the big one, which had clearly been pumped up on plant food by the garden shop and looked like a goner for a couple of months after I got it home, has managed to produce TWO flowers this year. Here's the most recent:

Smells lovely too.

Warning: contains images that may shock.

This is going to be a picture-heavy post, but I figured if I'm going to go for disclosure, I may as well go for full disclosure. If you think you have a rubbish kitchen and you still feel that way at the end of this post, you have my sympathies.

So, here goes. Come on in...

That's pretty much everything you need to know. I have a grand total of two cupboards and there's always a lot of junk under the work top (to be fair, that big green plastic sack isn't there and I usually have the rubbish in the rubbish bin - I must have been using the bucket inside as a water pail when the photo was taken).

But oh, this is meant to be about full disclosure, and if you're going to shake your head in disbelief when I tell you I paid dollar (let alone top dollar) for this place, you need to see a little more. Let's start with the gas, which kind of hangs out right in the middle of the wall, taking a break after its great long journey right the way round the wall:


"Hangs out" is literal rather than figurative. The meter isn't hooked to the wall. I'm guessing that's really not a good idea, but the gas boiler was replaced about a year before I moved in so a gas person must have seen the meter then and not felt it was a major issue.

The electricity also takes a looooong journey into my flat. It comes up the stair to my front door, then treks all the way through to my kitchen, which is as far from the front door as it's possible to be, stops for a count, and then heads all the way back through the flat. It would be so much happier kicking back in my hall cupboard, but the guy who just gave me a quote for kitchen-bathroom-electricity-plumbing-heating (did I mention I don't have heating either? and that I paid good money for this place? while being quite aware of all of the above... sheesh) wants to charge me big bucks for shifting it (even though all the electricity will be getting ripped out), so I guess it's going to stay in the kitchen for now.

That little blue meter is the electricity. (Take advantage of this opportunity to admire the window - it's the only nice thing you'll see in this post).

The white box above contains.... fuses! Wooo! Every time I've shown this to a contractor they've shuddered.


The other really fierce thing is this downpipe and the plumbing in general. As I mentioned, all this was visible when I bought and I STILL went ahead with it. I've always thought people who say they have a "coup de coeur" for a house are soft in the head but that's exactly what happened to me with this place. I wasn't even over the threshold and it felt like home. When they offered to show me the kitchen and the bathroom I was all "Ooh, it has a bathroom too? That's great. Lovely!"

The water pipe sprang a leak the first weekend I was in here (fortunately just on the building-side of the tap!) but there haven't been any issues since. It's just so terribly, terribly ugly though. I've never really looked at it this closely before - I'm borderline horrified.

Let's move on to nicer things: cupboards!

I have a big one:

And a little one under the window:

Between them and my fridge I survive quite well but it will be awfully nice to have more storage space when I get the new kitchen. I think it's going to be one of these "how did I manage before?" moments.

Anyway, here's an aerial shot for a bit of perspective:

And a picture from just after I'd moved in:

Oh, and remember there's a giant hole between the kitchen and the bathroom, just to the left of this picture.

Like I said, if you still feel bad about your kitchen, you have my sympathies.

Finished.

I've done it! I started on April 26 so it's only dragged out for a measly four months, but that doesn't matter because it's done. DONE! And boy oh boy but it's beeeooutiful.

Soooo beautiful. Sigh. I keep going into the kitchen just to admire it and have little daydreams about how lovely it could look surrounded by a non-disastrous kitchen.

Anyway, here's a little "see how far that window's come" set of pictures:
- back in March, when there was scaffolding outside my window and I kept forgetting and ambling through to the kitchen straight after my shower thinking that my window still looked out onto a wall and not onto a bunch of builders doing work on said wall. Oops.


- getting started back in April. When I was still a paint-stripping innocent and had no idea what awaited me. Although I have also realised that the whole thing, including sanding and oiling and more sanding and more oiling and blacking and polishing this weekend, probably took about 45 hours all in, which is exactly how long that little baby blanket took to knit. Not that I'd be queuing up to knit baby blankets if rubber gloves were part of the equation.

- here it is before I went on holiday, when I gaily thought that the sanding-oiling-blacking-polishing bit would be done in two shakes of a lamb's tail. I thought it was pretty then, but the extra work has made all the difference. And no, I can't believe I'm getting all gushy about a window either, but there you go.

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- and here's the blacking in progress:

- and here's the blacking and polishing done:

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Yay.

Small-scale photo extravaganzette

Beach weather... For me, this was one of our best days, surrounded by storm clouds but quite happy in a little pocket of sunshine.

Which isn't to say that anoraks aren't still de rigueur when it comes to beachwear...

Although I'm quite happy if wearing an anorak is the price to pay for enjoying this. :)

The huge west beach - bleak, beautiful, and ferociously windy.

Best beach find: a perfectly-formed, translucent prawn skin. It was about as long as one of my fingers and even though it was extremely fragile, all the articulations still worked. It still had its feelers and everything. First time I've seen one!

The house where my great-grandfather was born.

And some others that don't need explanation. It was a good holiday, the kind of open air and space that makes me wonder what I'm doing living in a city.

One day, I will finish my kitchen windows.

But for the moment, I'll just keep on sanding away. Lots of sanding last night and tonight - I'm now just about ready to oil the easy half and am in the middle of a little experiment with the iron-protector cream, which is really more like shoe polish than anything else, to see how it copes with rust.

Anyway, I'll post pictures of that and of gorgeous beaches as soon as I get them off my camera and sorted out. In the meantime, here's a photo of the little blanket I knitted for my newest nephew:

Not remotely complicated, but quite pretty for all its simplicity and I think my brother and sister-in-law were pleased. My nephew responded with a small vomit, but given that he doesn't have a lot of other ways of expressing himself yet, I'll take that as a positive...

Here's my very first video post. Doesn't show the full glory of the beaches, but heck, what could be cooler than an airport where the plane has been known to be put in a holding pattern, not because there aren't any landing slots, but because there's a fat seal lying in the middle of the beach. :)


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On holiday

The island is as wild and peaceful as ever, although the weather leaves a little to be desired. At least that means I'm getting lots of time to knit a blanket for my latest nephew, who was born ten days ago.

I'm also managing to unwind a bit from work, helped by the face that I resigned on Wednesday 23rd July. No smiley in the world could do justice to the relief I feel, but here goes anyway. :) I found my new job so quickly that it all took me a bit by surprise and I didn't really have time to think about whether it's really what I want, but I do think it'll be interesting and worth doing for a couple of years at least. We'll see, but whatever happens, it was certainly time for a change. God but it feels good to know I'll be out of there long before Christmas. I'm a happy happy kid.

Knitting for stress relief

I guess I could have done "sanding woodwork for stress relief" or "protecting wrought iron with the special cream I bought for stress relief" or "anything basically USEFUL for stress relief", but I've been feeling so anxious about this potential work situation that real, hard-core procrastination was the only thing that would do. So I took a trip to one of my favourite places in all Paris - the Marché Saint-Pierre (the website is worth visiting for the translation alone) - and went yarn shopping.

And then stayed up until 2am this morning trying to work out how to do seed stitch. And yeah, I know it's dead straightforward once you've sussed out that you need to change from knit to purl and back by pulling the yarn through the gap BETWEEN the needles, but that is something NONE of the knitting sites tell you. And by the time you have a durrr moment and work it out for yourself, it's already 11 the next morning and you've probably unpicked everything about, oooh, three times. Sheesh.

Anyway, my wedding washclothes are now ticking along nicely and should help keep me busy when I'm home in Scotland for a couple of weeks from Sunday next (assuming my needles don't get confiscated by the meanies at CDG). I'm also dreaming of granny squares and ripple blankets, because another procrastination project over which I can then procrastinate is probably just exactly what I need at the moment...

Hope and hard work

The hope refers to a big ol' fingers crossed about work and the hope that I'll be able to spill the beans in the next week or so.

The hard work refers to my kitchen window. Yep, I finally did it: all stripped. I was starting to wonder whether I'd ever get there - it's such ferociously hard work and takes so LONG and I hate wearing rubber gloves, especially when they get wet and sweaty and my hands smell of rubber for 24 hours after I finish. Other than that, great fun.

Anyway, still a few little bits of scraping left but I'll do that dry, without any paint-stripper. The important thing is that the windows are washed and ready for sanding and oiling, even if it took me a good part of my long weekend. I did a big session on Saturday afternoon then spent another seven or so hours this afternoon.

It was a glorious 14th of July outside, so shame I was inside fuming it up, but at least it'll be another "memorable" Bastille Day. My first 14th July, I went to the Firemen's Ball in the 6th and the fireworks on the Champs de Mars with Georgina, the second I was painting my then-new flat at Bastille and almost fell off my ladder when the jets and helicopters flew past after the military parade, the third I was up in Granville and met J for the first time, the fourth I was in Rouen with D and had a fairly massive post-break-up fight with J on the phone (oh yeah), and last year, I went to the fireworks on the Champs de Mars with... good ol' J. Heh.