Recent Things: We're Still Alive! (A Huge Kitchen Update!)

Hello, anyone still out there? 

I have left you hanging for quite some time... possibly the longest time I've gone without blogging... but oh how things have been.

Let's just say, I started wondering if our house was built on an ancient burial ground.... 

But since I've left you so long without an update, I thought I'd check in and catch you up on what's been happening.

Let's get into it! >>

When we last spoke, the columns in our kitchen had just been put in and the house was a mess.... and that was back in March.

From there, things only got messier... and messier and messier.

We pulled up every last tile in the house by hand, tore up the carpets and found... quite a few irritating surprises. 

From a random concrete slab to 10,000 screws buried into the floor where there must have been squeaks to missing planks, old lino flooring backing and strange water marks.

The old fireplace slab was jackhammered out (and even more mess was made)...

New floorboards were laid to fill holes where walls had moved and doorways were filled over the years.

And Jesse and I moved back in with my parents whilst the floors were sanded, finished and polished.

That meant the puppies were very happy 😜

Jesse's birthday was whilst we were staying with my parents, so my Dad and I activated stealth mode and snuck a new fire pit and chairs into the backyard as a surprise gift.

After spending Easter weekend at my parents, the floors were dry and we could move back home! 

For old floors, they ended up coming up really well and whilst we were so nervous to walk on them, we've been loving them since. 

Definitely the best choice - both in terms of budget and character. New floors would have cost us tens of thousands of dollars and tiles were going to be expensive as well - so restoring these old floors ended up being the most budget friendly option.

Whilst they're not perfect, we're really happy with them.

After spending so many weeks taking up tiles and carpet and working on things around the house, we were itching to get stuck into a project... soooo, we tore the horrible green carpet off the staircase.

We're now thinking of sanding it back and painting it (adding new wood treads is $$$$$$) but for now we have an ugly MDF staircase 😅

We also discovered that people will literally take anything on Facebook.... including the old carpet we tore up downstairs.

We had one man pick up a huge roll for his wife's camping trailer project, another who wanted to line the back of their car and a woman who came via bus and left carrying a huge roll or carpet to take back on the bus with her (so odd).

All of the carpet was listed for free (we didn't need money for it, we just wanted it gone) and snapped up so quickly.

Then the drama continued. I found myself totally unable to use my left hand because I had both carpal tunnel syndrome and ulnar tunnel syndrome (basically my whole hand and wrist was in pain, not just one side), so I've been wearing this lovely brace ever since.

But the kitchen was about to go in and we were so excited.... but that quickly changed.

First, the install date was pushed back two weeks whilst we waited for the cabinets to be spray painted..... and then it was finally install day.

The first few hours were fine and everything seemed to be going well.... but then I came downstairs and found

The floors were scratched.

The fridge was dented.

The cabinets we waited so long for were sprayed wrong and looked like a horrible tie dye job.

So the cabinets were packed back up and sent off to be resprayed and I was assured they'd fix the fridge and floors.

Surely that's the end of the bad luck, right? 

But then the cabinets went back in and they measured for the stone bench tops and it finally felt like we were getting closer.

And then I got a phone call to tell me the stone benchtop I'd designed the kitchen around wouldn't actually work for our kitchen. It didn't come in a big enough slab and they'd made a mistake telling me it could.

Even though the whole kitchen was designed around the island and the island could have been any size.

So it was back to the drawing board and back to the stone shops to choose a new bench top and after a week, seven guys carried 300kg of stone into my house.

To say I was anxious was the understatement of the century. Would the cut outs be correct? Would it fit between the columns? Had they measured right? Was the new stone a smart choice? 

I was a bundle of nerves and luckily, it did fit and the stone was right. 

It kind of sucked the joy out of the kitchen and whilst it's close to done, I still feel kind of blah about it. It looks good, but I think it's been such a source of frustration that I won't love it until it's totally finished.

And so I'm going to wait to show you the kitchen until it's all done (we're waiting on new cornices, the gyprock to be finished and the kitchen to be repainted) but here's a little sneak peek as Jesse and I checked whether our pendant lights would work last night.

Don't worry, when it's all finished I will be sharing plenty of photos and all of the details... and maybe some what not to do's as well.

But there you have it, an update from a very exhausted Kristy who will be putting off any major renovations for at least 20 years 😅

   

   

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