watch tHe skies

“Hello, we were expecting the cheque for the balance on the kitchen”

“Were you? But we are still waiting for the fridge?”

“Yes, but can you send the cheque in the meantime?”

“Er, no, fit our fridge and you can have your cheque.”

And strangely, after waiting weeks for the NEFF fridge, it arrives next day. So finally we have the kitchen furniture finished. Ceiling gets skimmed on tuesday and the floor is coming the week after. Nearly there…

I was happily sat watching some crap on TV the other night, when a Bird’s Eye advert came on and told me that most salmon, one of my favourite foods, is often artificially coloured. So much so that there is even a “Salmon colour wheel” used to measure the pinkness.

You see, the flesh of wild salmon is naturally pink because the fish consume large amounts of shrimps. However, almost 90% of the salmon sold in supermarkets is farmed. So farmed salmon isn’t fed on shrimps, and guess how it gets its pink colour? Chemicals of course! Our friends in the industry are feeding the salmon canthaxanthin, which is also fed to chickens to give their skin and eggs a brighter yellow complexion.

This depresses me. Perhaps it would have been better for me to be blissfully ignorant of all this. It seems that more and more foods are being pumped full of toxins just to sell them without regard to the long-term effects. At a time where Tescos posts record profits yet again, perhaps Jamie Oliver needs to get back on our TVs and save the grown ups this time.

Our tiling is now finished and looks great. Thanks to Parkside tiles in Wigston for the excellent Amalfi range.

Looks like the kitchen completion date will slip in to June. We have decided to have the ceiling skimmed as it’s looking a bit ropey and spoils the kitchen that we have worked so hard on. Unfortunately our plasterer can’t do it until the end of May, so we will have to delay the floor installation until after the ceiling is done and painted.

Hopefully the fridge will be installed in the coming week. The knackered little one we have borrowed to keep us going is tripping the RCD on a regular basis, so we have just about had enough of it.

Finally the tiles are going on. All in place, tomorrow they get grouted. Hopefully the fridge is turning up next week and I just have to paint the wall above the window. Like the sockets? All from Screwfix, half the price of B&Q. Floor still to go.
So there is a chance that we might reach our aim of getting kitchen done before baby arrives, but only if baby goes late by a couple of weeks!

It seems that Leicestershire is at the forefront of female exploitation this month with the opening of Bubbles n Babes in Burbage, about 12 miles from where we live.

Situated on a small industrial estate, Bubbles n Babes offer bikini and topless car wash services for £30 and £40 respectively. The moral uproar in the fairly well to do village has resulted in a wave of publicity and queues around the block. (more…)

Stage 1 of the kitchen pretty complete, just a bit of artexing to do and the small matter of a fridge… Next up tiling and new floor, so I’ll stop harping on about it for a while and probably go back to babytalk for a while.

Did you notice the spotlights?? Cool…

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So today was a no-show from our kitchen fitters. Unfortunately John the electrician is poorly so another day with only the microwave to keep us in hot food. Not a big deal really, we can live with that. Apparently NEFF have discontinued the fridge that we wanted, which leaves us fridgeless for 3 weeks until the new stock comes in. We have a temporary fridge so we can survive for a few weeks, the only concern will be if baby decides to make an appearance ahead of due date.

Along those lines Jenny is getting heftier by the minute. The normally slim waistline is now up to a monster 41″ and growing. The end result is that she is starting waddle and wobble in comedy fashions, and she is also getting very tired, probably because she can’t sleep through the night.

Anyway John the spark should be back tomorrow to finish off the electrics, which will leave us with a functional kitchen until they return to fix the snags and install the new fridge. This moves us on to the next stage: tiles and floor. Unfortunately we can’t get them to tile until the cabinets have been fitted correctly, so it looks like the whole project will probably not be complete before baby arrives. Not a big problem except that it means that the dining room is going to be full of kitchen stuff for a couple of months. Not ideal.

And things were going so swimmingly. The problem with leaving us with a half finished kitchen over a weekend is that we are going to use it and spot problems with it. We have identified a few snags that are going to need fixing. (more…)

Things are starting to come together now. Although most of the appliances are in now, only the dishwasher is actually operational (hence the old microwave brought in to provide us with hot food). Actually the dishwasher was probably the thing that we missed the most, so we’ve been using paper plates for the last couple of days to minimise washing up.

The drinking water filter is excellent (big water drinker, me). The new mini breakfast bar will have quite an effect, as previously we didnt have anywhere to actually sit and eat in the kitchen. The new broom cupboard (out of shot) should keep everything nice and tidy.

So a few more doors to fit, appliances to commission and a fridge to find (didn’t turn up as expected yesterday), and a few snags to fix that we’ve spotted, and they should be finished on monday.

So tomorrow’s mission, should we accept it, is to pick some tiles and get someone round to price for the floor…

Well after a day down in our Bristol office I come back to see serious progress on our kitchen. The worksurface is in and so is our lovely Franke sink and triflow tap with integral drinking water filter.

Appliances go in tomorrow so we are almost there, we just need to decide what the hey to do with tiles and flooring. Getting there, slowly but surely, but will it be done before baby arrives?