Kitchen

The kitchen seemed to be good and lovely at first sight, but in the end seems to be much more of a problem than I thought. The previous owners have told me that the walls behind the kitchen block had been treated against humidity - well: duh! They quite obviously haven't. Do I care? Yes! Will I break out the complete block to keep away the moisty cellary smell - you better think twice. I'll be broke anyway, so I try not to think about it at this time. I'll probably patch it up, batten the hatches at the backside of the kitchen block against the musty smell and start praying!

	The kitchen came with the complete furniture: fire, fridge, steamcap and all the storage space you could wish for. I admit, some of it is unsuitable for dried food, but I'll have to stock up on glass jars with decent caps and I'll be happy to store whatever I could need.
	The wall with the window is pretty damp, but this will be finished once the injections have been made and taken effect. I'll have to wait about a year for the wall to be finished but that gives me some time to stock up on funds.
	As a last-minute decision I took out the chalkboard walls under the kitchen window - they smelled awful with humidity and I feel this will do my kitchen a world of good. Even the bad walls look better than the fake walls you can see on the picture above ... I'd love to do something about the wall behind the kitchen block but taking out the complete block for this would be a bit too much now, would it ... I'll have to live with some damp vapours. The window sill went too ... it was no use anyway, moving around and not stable enough to really use it.
	This is the intermediary stage just before the radiator will be installed. The plumber had a blast trying to fix the radiator to the wall as the bricks kept crumbling under his hands and at one point, the radiator was hanging so sideways that one corner nearly hit the floor! He actually had to inject the walls with a quick-drying synthetic glue to get his plugs to cling to the bricks and voilà ...
	... the finished product! I admit, the rest of the wall doesn't look like too grand, but you just wait until next year ... By the way, I have had a tiny radiator installed near the entrance as well - isn't it cute?
	To the left, you can see the kitchen before the false ceiling has been removed - below after the fact: the feel of the place has changed completely with just another 70 cm of height added to the whole thing. I even found another chimney. Even though this means more work (and we're talking a lot more work here), I think it's worth it ...
	And yet another exciting stage: the new bits of ceiling are being installed and until now I feel confident that one day, they will be looking just great ... Obviously, the sides of those bits of ceiling will have to be barred vertically as well, but this is just a minor adjustment ... just you wait for the lights to be installed!
	Lights have been installed now - or better: the cabling is complete and I'll just have to put up the plywood to close off the openings between the false ceiling bits and the real ceiling. The main change in this picture is the closed off roll-down blinds opening that let in such a lot of cold air that I could feel it all the way to the bathroom - give me just some bubble wrap and chickenwire and there is a job well done. It'll be closed off behind a trapdoor, so I don't mind about it any longer. The installation of the nice blue curtains has brightened the kitchen enormously and I'm looking forward to wallpaper and paint (but that will only be next year).
	Look at those brown bits above the spotlights: the construction phase has drawn to an end (apart from some teensy bits like installing the door to the shutter compartment above the window and the doors to the electric meters to the left of the window) and upcoming events will include - but not be limited to - wallpapering the place and - some day - paint the whole thing. Right now, this looks very gloomy because of the brown walls, but hopefully I won't have to bear this for long ... Quite like the living room, this kitchen begins to look presentable and will be even more so once the missing walls in the vestibule will have been plastered and dried and the complete ground floor will be wallpapered, which is the next big project to start. In the meantime, I have been able to build the door to the "column cabinet" and just need to fix the shutter compartment door onto the opening. The kitchen is ready for wallpapering!
	Before adding the wallpaper, the wooden panels needed to get a first layer of paint so the glue won't be absorbed by the untreated plywood. I now have a wonderful baby-blue kitchen (because the "tender blue" paint was the cheapest around ... I can tell you why now!)
	After a long beauty sleep the kitchen finally gets to be worked on ... I have found a new plasterer - the old one has stopped his business due to health issues and it has taken me more than 7 months to find a new one, figures! Anyway: the new plasterer has finished the plastering around the window (the last wall to be needing any plastering for a long time, I hope) and it is drying out nicely right now. Since the kitchen was the next target to be finished, I got to it and started taking off the grizly old wallpaper (and the one beneath it (and the one underneath that one)) and found a plastered wall with a blocked up doorway and lots of ugly holes. Figures, too! Wallpapering on this wall was not so bad in the end, but with the strange angles and the large number of surfaces and corners it is going to take me some sessions to finish it all. I just had the force to do one single wall before I had to stop working - feeling week and ill myself.
	Next step: colour scheme discussion and application. I had a pretty good idea that I wanted something green rather than blue to warm up the atmosphere in the kitchen. I had the blue curtains, but blue and green CAN go well together if chosen carefully. Anyway: I started off with the eggshell colour from the living room which was perfect for the ceiling: not white, but very clear, yet warm. The two other colours - which should go on the walls and columns respectively were somewhat elusive, so I went back to the colour advice / paint mixer guy I had been buying paint from in the past and asked his advice. This is why I ended up with a nice flashy green (think neon green without the neon) plus a very light pumpkin-like sort-of-reddish off-white. This is a colour that defies description, but you'll get the idea. Just have to pop on the plinths along the ceiling and the kitchen is ready to go (and waiting for the corner bench that is supposed to come in here to help seating the masses of visitors for lunch).
	I spent the morning placing the plinths along the ceiling and wonderful they look in the end. The colour scheme has come together and even the blue curtains look okay, especially with the red carpet that adds another set of colours. To the right you can see a detail with the three colours combined (the green behind the blue curtains is barely visible, but you get the idea). I'm happy with this and the kitchen is now completed, bar the wooden bench where the table is right now.
	The wooden bench has become reality in just a couple of weeks. Once I had started working on it - things got moving along and I am currently the proud owner of a practically finished wooden bench in my kitchen. It still needs some work in the backrest area and the corner construction, but it can be used to sit on and have a nice and quiet meal: and that's more than can be said for that kitchen during the last nearly two years! Some more decorative touches and things are looking just about the way I want them to.
	And here are some of the decorative touches: the kitchen art I made from odds and ends and some leftover paint, while the corner bench still awaits finishing works.