Beautiful!

The view on the way home yesterday - the sea was such a beautiful colour...

All ready!

Yesterday Mr Caldwell came and did the gibstopping.  He came back today and finished it, and put up the decorative moulding.  It doesn't go right round the room because we left gaps for the cupboards.

We covered the floor with hardboard, did some painting, and - tada! - ready for the new kitchen!
Thankyou very much to Dad for his help, and Mum for having the kids :)

The wallpaper we ordered won't arrive for a few weeks but that's probably just as well because we didn't have time anyway.

Nearly there

This was written on one of the cupboards we pulled out of the kitchen...

We've packed the kids off for a holiday with Grandma so as to get a good run at the kitchen.  Last week we stapled in the building paper and packed the wall with batts (or "Earthwool" as they call it - contains neither earth nor wool).

Over the last few days David and Dad have put the gib board, and some plywood, on the walls, and put a new layer of gib on the ceiling.

 Lifting 3m long sheets of 13mm gib up to ceiling height was a bit of an effort, but a lot easier with the frame Dad built, and the props to hold it up.

When we lifted the old lino we found a layer of grey fluffy cardboard stuff underneath, which we have nearly finished scraping off, then we'll put down a layer of hardboard.

So far, we're on target.  And really tired.  Can't wait until it's all done...

Best-laid plans...

So today was to be Gib-the-Ceiling Day, until we found water pouring out of the front garden.  Parts of the mains water pipe are very corroded and decided to fail today.  It's all taped up while David and Dad get more pipe and rearrange their plans for the day.

So that's a pain.  But we have made some progress, the kitchen date is now the 19th of Nov (it was originally the 12th but we found we needed consent to reline an exterior wall, add a week).

This is what the kitchen used to look like, before we moved in.  But not this big - real estate photos make the place look huge.

 This is the kitchen a month ago

 and now...

rabbits

Yesterday morning we discovered 16 baby rabbits in our three girl rabbits' cages!

New Rhodys

We have had a lot of new rhododendrons come out in the last few weeks.

Four pink 

One is red

 four or five purple

           and this very light pink one just came out today

Demolition

Yesterday we started taking the linings off the kitchen walls, in order to get them straightened out before the new kitchen arrives.  The kids were enthusiastic about ripping off gib board.  There was a mixture of Gib, plasterboard and plywood.  Behind the plywood (below the window) was tongue and groove, and behind that were some old pipes.  According to the plans, the kitchen sink used to be there.  We tacked the plywood back onto the wall because there was a wicked draught coming up from under the house.

Above the dining-room doorway there was some interesting joinery.

Some of these bits of wood aren't actually doing anything at all.  The left-hand end of the beam above the door sticks out about 8mm from the rest of the framing, which is why there was a bulge in the wall there.

Apparently if you run out of underlay, newspaper works just as well.

Interesting lino