PHASE ONE COMPLETED

Well what do you think of it so far puss? Not bad going for a week and a half’s work. I know how picky you cats can be so no good wrinkling your little pink nose in disdain at the dusty mess and smell all round, it’s something we’ve all got to live with including you (even if you don’t exactly live here).

Where's my bowl going to be?

Perfect for a spot of bird watching

Looking past the detritus of builder debris and tools you can slowly begin to see the re-vamped room zooming into sharper relief especially now that the plastering is done and drying. In this warmer weather, I expect to be ready to put a first coat of paint on the walls in about a week’s time with a second top coat applied after the units have been fitted. No need to prime the plaster apparently, a watered down lick of paint should do.

Walls all plastered and drying nicely

Side wall minus the back door

Final shaping of the fireplace

Underneath its layer of brick dust, the patio has also taken on a whole new aspect. The corner where the back door once opened out now appears strangely larger and means we can move plants around or even add a few more (you can never have enough plants!). And at a first glance, Plan B (rendering the side wall to cover up any horrors) may not be needed as the builders have managed to recycle/colour match the bricks used to our existing old imperial ones. It’s pretty damn perfect and as a perfectionist, that feedback means the royal seal of approval.

Ooops daylight's gone but you get the idea

Not much luck in tracking down a match for the old floor tiles and with only 3 weeks until the kitchen itself is delivered, it’ll be a race against the clock to find a suitable colour or style that will blend in with the existing. I’ve managed to find a seller on Ebay with tiles that might be close but as beige or grey seem to be the flooring colours of choice these days then looking for dark green tiles is like searching for the proverbial needle in a haystack. Fingers crossed that the Ebay tile sample will be the answer to the flooring conundrum.

SMOOTH OPERATOR

Workers of the financial world can we all get together to lobby the government for the abolition of the inappropriately named ‘bank’ holidays? The irony that it’s largely those who work in banks that end up working on what is deemed a ‘bank’ holiday is not lost on me or thousands of other poor buggers stuck in a warped financial services equivalent of Groundhog Day, the gap between one day and the next depending on where on the planet your clients are based rather than when the planet faces away from the sun (bedtime). Oh for a glorious 3 day weekend like everyone else!

Builders on the other hand don’t work bank holidays. Ours made up for lost time by getting plastered again, finishing off the framework for the new French doors and side window with solid metal edging and a thick coating of that reddish brown plaster which incidentally smells like eggy farts (was that you?). The house reeks!

What we started off with

After one week

Right hand side of kitchen at start of project

Right hand side of kitchen one week later

No microwave dinners tonight. Tuesday officially declared ‘Toby’ night in lieu of lack of properly cooked food for an entire week. We’ve eaten enough carvery to last the next couple of days which should get round the pesky problem of cooking until at least Thursday.

Fireplace before plastering

Our oven and hob will fit in here

UPTON HOUSE PLANT SALE

You can’t beat a good plant sale when it comes to chasing away bank holiday blues. We’ve been coming to the Upton House annual plant sale for a number of years now and whilst it’s not one of the biggest we’ve been to, there’s always a bargain or two to be had if you look around.

Upton House plant sale

There’s one particular stall that always sells small Acer trees for a fiver. Our lovely red leaved acer came from this stall many years ago and, fingers crossed, has happily thrived in its pot on the patio ever since, surviving the best (and worst) of the English weather and completely recovering from being decapitated by next doors roofers last year. It’s grown into a beautiful specimen and I was almost tempted to come away with a green variety to keep it company.

The Acer stall - good for a bargain

Moving on from the Acer stall, I was also tempted to splash out on a yellow or white variety of Thalictrum (meadow rue) as I’ve become quite enamoured of these tall classy flowering perennials. They fit in well in the flower borders with their elegant stems and powderpuff blooms. But, no my purse remained tightly shut as I made my way round the stalls passing up the Thalictrums instead for a Kirengeshoma Koreana.

Kirengeshoma Koreana

Kirengeshoma Koreana otherwise known as Korean waxbells is a herbaceous perennial shrub like plant primarily grown for its foliage having lovely maple-shaped leaves. Good for part shady areas, it will look lovely near the Acer once the patio has been re-arranged around the bricked up back door. These plants are deemed fairly low maintenance although quite rare to find in everyday plant nurseries.

And after a good splurge round the plant stalls, a bit of relaxing photography around the Upton House cottage gardens.

Exploring the cottage gardens

I loved the vibrancy of the pink

Tiny hidden 'lanterns'

Garden photography is always greatly rewarding. There's a thousand different colours and shapes to catch the eye. The hardest part is in choosing what to photograph and to capture the very essence of the flower from its tissue thin petals to those tiny pollen laden stamens quivering in the lightest of breezes.

More interesting when viewed close up

A beautiful orange poppy

Loved the veined detail on the petals

Another glorious vibrant pink bloom

Serene yellow irises swaying in the breeze

From the riotous colour of the flowering border to the peaceful English countryside with its rolling hills, stony tracks and abundance of creatures large and small.

The Old Granary - Wareham

Mum's swan taxi

Arne Farm

The hedgerow

Where does this track lead to?

Strange silvery trees in the forest

Looking across Poole Harbour

A white heron/egret

Jet black slug 

TILE TRAUMA

I’ve won the lottery! According to the email just discovered in my inbox I should log into my account immediately for some good news. Imagine what a swanky kitchen I could have with several million to spend. My lottery win - £3.40. Not the Euro-millions I was dreaming of but possibly enough for a coffee at Starbucks. Oh well, you got to be in it to win it so better luck next time eh.

My little grey cells have been hot on the trail of Titanic Verde tiles all morning, surfing countless websites in search of a supplier who might still sell the floor tiles I purchased back in 2002 from Topps Tiles.   Most of us forget that kitchen floors are generally laid after all units have been fitted so as soon as you strip away old units, unsightly gaps appear that were previously hidden.

Creative thinking needed to plug the tile gap

Fortunately, I still had the receipt for the original purchase of these and Topps were able to track down a third party supplier from their computer records.  Fingers crossed my luck holds out better than in the Euro-millions.  If anyone out there happens to have a random supply of Titanic Verde tiles gathering dust in the back of a garage, please let me know.

Titanic Verde tiles

Whilst my new kitchen is slowly shaping up, the patio area resembles the aftermath of a nuclear holocaust.  Plants, pots, and paving slabs are caked in fallout brick dust.  

The Arum lily is caked in brickdust

Pots look like they've got leprosy

I can’t even hose the foliage as the outside tap was removed when the French doors were installed.  It’ll be a great shame if the fruit trees die as a result but looking at the grey clouds on the horizon perhaps the usual bank holiday rain and wind will save the day.

The aftermath of builder's holocaust

My rhododendrons are looking lovely

These remind me of Exbury Gardens

I'm not the only one that loves rhododendrons

Meadow Rue flowers

GETTING PLASTERED

No late night blogging yesterday as the evening was spent in deep cultural contemplation at the Regent Centre, Christchurch for the incredibly long live broadcast performance of ‘Man and Superman’ starring Ralph Fiennes. Lucky I’ve got a bit of extra lagging on the old rear end to guard against buttock numbness otherwise my bum would have been deader than Maggie Thatcher.

“Heaven is the most angelically dull place in all creation” 

Meanwhile, back in the kitchen the builders have been getting plastered. (I could murder a Southern Comfort but can’t find the bottle in our dining room mess!) Gone is the back door, sucked under a thick coating of reddish brown muddy plaster like a victim sacrificed to a DIY bog monster.

Back door plastered up

Being an old Victorian house it’s not easy for builders to find a colour match to the imperial bricks used back in the early 1900’s but many of the old bricks removed from the patio door area are being recycled to fill the external gaps so fingers crossed it won’t look too bad after it’s finished. Plan B is to render the entire exterior wall if it does.

Waiting to be bricked up

Retaining period features is important in a world where old ornate architecture is swept aside for bland concrete monoliths. Affordable housing these days is a cardboard box on London’s Embankment and I count myself lucky to have my old Victorian pile that’s for sure. Glad to see these chaps are taking good care not to upset the old lady too much.

Side window shaping up

The original external window sill has also been recycled albeit cracked in 3 pieces to get it back into place. I’m hoping that with lashings of exterior emulsion, the ravages of time and concrete patches will be less visible. 

Replacing the original window sill

‘Must be a female kind of logic and where has that got you? Hundreds of pounds and gallons of moisturiser later only to discover the cracks continue to come through’ gloats the other half. He’s so right. It’s only the beauty industry that benefits from filling our pretty little heads with all this over-hyped rubbish. Now where did I put that tube of No 7 night cream?

MAKING A CLEAN BREAST OF IT

The pace of progress with Project Nouvelle Cuisine is outstanding. These guys are definitely the Usain Bolt of builders, sprinting through each structural aspect of our design in record time – it’s enough to make me feel giddy!

Came home today to find an ominous tattered sackcloth curtain hanging across the kitchen doorway like the ethereal remains of Miss Havisham’s wedding dress from Great Expectations. What could it be hiding? Should I be nosey and take a peep? Well, it would be rude not to.

And tonight’s star prize is a bricked up garden doorway. The side door leading out onto the patio is no more. Once plastered over it’ll be just a distant memory, only discernible by the tell-tale corona of up-ended bricks visible from outside the building. From the inside you’ll never know the door was there in the first place.

Back door bricked up

Even more curious is what’s taking shape where the fireplace once stood. They’ve certainly made a clean (chimney) breast of it, smashing away the mantelpiece and exposing all the old brickwork. There’s even an old rusty metal rod stretching across the fireplace that I suspect was once used to hang a cauldron over a fire. Thank goodness for fan assisted ovens! None of that hubble, bubble, toil and trouble any more to fix up a bite to eat.

Fireplace - before

Fireplace - after

Alas, even that would have been preferable to our bake in the box feast of suspect looking noodles from the local Home Buys store (99p a box). Two minutes in a microwave to have something I wouldn’t give a stray dog for dinner! But beggars can’t be choosers.  We should be giving thanks instead as I’m sure even this E-numbered disgusting concoction would be considered a banquet by starving millions on the other side of the world.

OUTSIDE INSIDE

This afternoon I realised why it is that people crave living in glass houses as I opened the front door to be greeted by a shaft of light coming through the new patio doors. What a difference it’s made already, bringing the lushness of the lawn and radiant colour from the azaleas right into the heart of the kitchen. It’s like having the outside inside.

New patio doors looking onto the decking

Two days and not a scrap of the old kitchen in sight! Wall tiles, units, appliances, gas and water pipes, it’s all been ripped out in the blink of an eye. At this point I have to banish all thoughts of rogue traders doing a runner and leaving the place like leftovers at a vampire banquet, the lifeblood sucked clean from the room. Tomorrow there’ll be another surprise in store and another the next day, a year’s worth of Christmas mornings all rolled into a fortnight. You never know what you’re going to walk into when you open the front door.

Old kitchen has disappeared 

Preparation work has started for the removal of the back door too. Architrave gone (not the modern way you know) and plaster peeled back to reveal the invisible skeletal framework holding the back door in place. Quite fascinating to see just how flimsy these things appear when stripped back to the bone.

Making the side window smaller

Getting ready to rip the back door out

A few things to note for my client ‘snagging’ list, being the control freak that I am it’s a form of comfort blanket having that checklist to run through with the builders at suitable points in the project. Little bit of this here and what about that bit there – you just need to hear it from the horse’s mouth that all those little nitty gritty things will be taken care of.

Patio doors from the outside