Monday, April 25, 2011

Kitchen progress

So we have a stripped out our kitchen and started to put new cupboards in. The preparation seemed to take forever but will be worth it in the end. The 2 draw cabinets wont be blue they just have their plastic on to protect them until we get the handles on and top black cupboards will go between the tall cabinet and the fridge/freezer. We have wooden worktops to go on but they need to be oiled underneath so one of the old tops is just perched on to make the cooker usable.
Phew..........



Sunday, April 17, 2011

Yay the kitchen is coming out!!!!

This is our Kitchen , lovely you say! NO! NO! NO! ..... its horrible, we moved in nearly 7 years ago and I hated it then and I hate it now. We had tried to spruce it up.....the doors were suppose to be antique pine, but they just looked dirty all the time so I painted them with laminate paint, we also had new work tops put on and changed the sink as both were damaged and split, we also put in the new cooker and cooker hood. This was all good and has lasted us ok for 6 years. But its all looking very grubby and tired and the paint is chipping off the doors. We did look at replacing the doors but as they are not standard size, it wasn't as easy or as cheap as we first thought. We now also realise the cabinets, especially the top ones are incredibly small. The breakfast bar takes up a lot of space and although the work top is useful we never sit at it and it becomes a bit of a dumping ground. For a large kitchen it looks really crowded. It needed updating and so we decided we may as well go for a complete redesign and change the whole thing.



Anyway to cut a long story short we went to Homebase and B&Q and were shocked at prices. They didn't really design what we wanted and for a very basic design they wanted thousands. Even if we had the money I would not have gone with them and I felt pressured. So we down loaded the Ikea kitchen planner, wow what fun I have had with that...... we have explored some really silly ideas but have opted for a very basic black and white design. Slick and simple......just like us haha. More importantly easy to fit as we are doing the work ourselves ( well apart from a few technical things like the gas)

So yesterday we ordered our first cabinets to be delivered just before easter and so let the chaos begin...

We are going for a 2 pronged attack, do the cooker side first and them move over to the other side.

Here we have just taken out the breakfast bar! Yay!!!


Tiles are off ( one of the few things I actually liked) on the cooker side and we have had the gas pipe moved ( only a few feet but vital for our new plan)


Watch this space for more updates!!!

Friday, April 8, 2011

Folksy Friday - Turtles

My latest painting is of Lily the turtle, we saw her when we were lucky enough to visit Lily beach in the Indian Ocean, They had a conservation project to protect these wonderful creatures until they were of a size to survive in the wild, Lily would still come back daily to join in the feed even though she had been released many years previously.
So I thought I would show you all the lovely turtles available on Folksy.

You can also see how I painted Lily on You tube