I just should get over it...

... and rename this blog "the lovely lizzies". They are lovely though.




Speaking of lovely, isn't this cat pretty?

Unfortunately, he's also very SAD (possibly because he's called Lulu, which doesn't sound like a very macho name to me).
So he spends all day and half the frrrrrigging night crying and meauwling and generally expressing his profound sorrow. I don't know where it's come from. For the last two years, I've known him for his remarkable climbing abilities and pretty little monkey face but for the last couple of months it's been the CRYING and the YOWLING and the DEEP SIGHS. Pretty much every single day. And almost every single night. Gah. At last it's given me and one of the Mr. Rupert Bears an opportunity to do some bonding of a "is that goddamn cat keeping you awake as well?" variety.

Happy new year.

Remember this? Hideous, wasn't it? And, from a very long time ago, this? Well, I'm pleased to say that after many hours of working and thinking and planning it's all come together and my kitchen now looks like this:

Yay! I'm totally thrilled. Still a few little things to iron out, like the shelf at the end of the top cabinets and the splashback, but it's worked out better than I could ever have hoped and I really enjoy spending time in there. I'm doing loads more cooking than I used to (not surprising really, but still) and having a washing machine after five and a half years of schlepping up and down endless flights of stairs is BEYOND exciting. Really. I spent a year on the fifth floor with no lift and three years on the sixth with no lift so even though moving to this flat, which is on the first floor, made it much less painful, not having to go to the laundrette is just the best thing.

I found two lovely little stools at an on-street antiques fair just before Christmas. I'd been looking for ones like that for a while and even though I knew I could buy them new at one of the big art shops at Nation, I quite fancied getting old ones like we have at the engraving workshop. They're working out perfectly and are perfect for perching on to read a magazine while I wait for things to cook or to make a change from eating on the couch. They spin down to the right height for my dining table and spin up to the right height for my wooden worktop so they're nice and multi-purpose and exactly what I'd hoped for. Very reasonably priced too, which is lucky because I'm rather skint after all this work. The little one could do with a bit of waxing to bring up the colour of the wood but that's small beans. Very pleased. :)

Here are some random tulips to finish. I was very surprised but quite pleased with how the second photo turned out.


Happy new year to anyone who stumbles by. Hope it's full of good things.

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.

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...

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.

.

- and here's the blacking in progress:

- and here's the blacking and polishing done:

.

Yay.

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.

Damn. Leaky bath... again.

Yesterday, I steeled myself and went ahead one of my least favourite tasks in the world: cleaning out the bath plughole. I can't stand it - it really brings me to the point of vomiting. My reward? A bath that drains... directly into the floor underneath. Soaking concrete, welcome back, we've missed you. :( Clearly my manoeuvres had dislodged the precarious plastic pipework that links the bath to the rest of my plumbing. Just what I needed. Back to buckets... I haven't done anything on the flat this weekend apart from cleaning. Last night I went for ciné/dîné with J. We saw Tabarly, a terrific documentary that I'd highly recommend. I found it quite moving, in part because he and J could be father and son. The likeness - from their faces, to their physiques, to the way they walk - is remarkable. In the trailer, it could be J in the little black & white interview (and in the shot that comes just before, where he's in the red shorts climbing the sail ;) ). It was like seeing everything that's good about him up on screen, the shyness and kindness and toughness and sense of humour, but without being confronted by the stubborn, headstrong, uncommunicative aspects of his personality. I've been feeling quite melancholy all day, mainly because Eric Tabarly seemed like a genuinely decent human being, but also perhaps because I know that it will never work with J, however fond of each other we are.

Anyway, all that's as may be. Even if I did nothing this weekend, I did at least work pretty hard last weekend, zapping woodworm and stripping paint on Saturday night until 2:30 am. It's so painfully slow. I started here:

And five hours later, I was here:

I've worked hard for about fifteen hours and I reckon I've got another twelve hours to go.

In the background, you can see the plant pot hanging system I've rigged up. I'm very pleased with it. Here's a close up:

Very pleased with my plants in general. My passion fruit plant is like slow-motion fireworks at the moment. Almost every day there's a new, glorious flower somewhere. They're so beautiful and delicate and bold.