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.