Before The Mayhem Descends...

ok, this is how The Midget Kitchen From Hell looks right now.... I think you should get a pretty good idea of how space-challenged it is. I don't want to unleash 2 men (aka the 13 and 12 year old) on the world claiming they never learnt to cook because there just wasn't any room in the kitchen.... so its going to be something like this:

I hate these doors! I've lived with them for 10 years, and now I'm getting rid of them!!!!

So, there's quite a bit of stuff to pack away ready for the makeover. A few shelves to take down. The ones with the scales and mugs on are possibly attached to the side of the cupboard with no-nails, if I remember rightly.

On the left-hand wall by the window, I've filled an empty space with some old shoe-trees (stretchers) that came from a house clearance and a red ice-cream scoop. Above the turquoise vase at the end of the window sill the tile on the wall came from a pile of rubble in a front garden. Alas, all the others were broken! Note how the end of the worktop is propped up on the dishwasher with a block of wood... to fit the dishwasher into the kitchen I took out a small end cupboard, yanked the worktop away from the wall and slid it and the sink cupboard along. I managed to do all that while being careful not to dislodge the plumbing!




The 'orrible rising damp (brick-built shed on the other side of that wall). Bleach should be enough for that, for now.

Keef is, of course, going to be re-instated above the cooker after the makeover! You can see where I've scribbled on the walls to make sure things will fit into their new places.




Manky tap circa 1990's and totally manky back-of-sink area. Not looking forward to what we're going to find when we move the sink unit away from that wall. In the jam jar there's a piece of green lego - don't ask!

The silver teapot is a Festival of Britain one, the spotty one came from Poundland.

A long time ago I found a kitchen ad in the local paper and stuck it on the shelf:

"Getting the kitchen just right makes a big difference to your peace of mind". Too right...

Top: Madeira and Cadiz coffee pots, Taunton Vale storage jars.
Middle: Scales from car boots £1 each, Arthur Wood piggy banks, Charlie & Lola mug "I Am Too Extremely Busy To Do Stopping", Tala measure.
Lower: Gorgeous cherry-red metallic tea caddy, eBay, some dice that I like to display with odd numbers, Staffordshire cup (one of 3, car boot). Plus black and white mugs which I am addicted to buying.

It will be this easy ;) !!!!

Wednesday Snowday

We've been hit full in the face by the big frenzy of snow that everyone in the south had over the weekend. Its lovely! Really fluffy and dreamy. And the sky was becoming pink as we went out - gorgeous. Did I remember to take the camera? No...

Went out to see the frozen canal, had a snowball fight with the 11 year old, tried out the new caff up the road.... muffins, mocha, yum, and then went to do a bit of food shopping, with only 6 things on the list. Came out with 6 bags, which was significantly more than one item per bag. That's the second time I've done that since the humungous online food shop last week. Oh well, at least we're not bothering Dominos Pizza anymore.

Some energetic house-rearranging on the go at the moment - gotta do something to burn off those mince pies - so finally a redundant filing cabinet has gone up into the storage-starved bedroom, and is now housing t-shirts and handbags. The makeover of the big filing cupboard is one stage nearer... its a Utility piece I've had for absolutely yonks. Was loosely thinking of silver and white wrapping paper for the interior, as the dining room is heading in a very white, black and grey direction, but think I'll do the inside of the doors with blackboard paint. Before and after pics will be on here soon.

A cheap reconfiguration of the kitchen is also being planned, with minimal purchases (a corner wall unit, worktop, tap, plus the fees of Messrs Plumber & Gas Fitter Ltd) and reuse of what is already there (carcasses, sink, cooker, appliances, vintage sideboards)... not the ideal week to be doing it, so will hold back with the sledgehammer just for now. Although Keef is definitely going to still be on the wall above the cooker...

Trashsparkle's Thursday Televisual Treats

Earlier tonight Trashsparkle was zonked - brain absolutely addled by the day's academic complexities, and so had to have a bit of a lie-down on the sofa. Flicked through LivingEtc, and found myself quite fancying a papier mache zebra for the lounge.

Revived by the tonic of an-approved-of-by-Gillian-McKeith raw carrot in time for the always-delightful It Takes Two. Finding it a bit hard to see exactly what botox Patsy Kensit has had, or it could just be the tv screen badly needs cleaning. Have a gut feeling it'll be Gavin doing the sad we're-leaving dancey bit at the end this weekend, though the poor lad seems to think he's still in with a chance now that he's worked out you need to do a bit of acting during the dancing. He 'fessed up the other evening to spending A LOT of time in front of the mirror - and I don't think Gavin knows about irony, the little lambkin that he is.

And then, joy of joy, it was a whole hour of Keef, with the god that is Andrew Graham-Dixon thrown in for extra eye candy. The Keef book has, naturally, been on the Christmas list for the past 2 weeks....

 ps Yesterday's indecisive day-off resulted in a chance find of a gorgeous G-Plan style 60s wooden armchair in a charity shop - I only went in for a cardigan!

I'm Starting My Christmas List!

All I Want For Christmas (so far) Is:

1. Keef's autobiography, of course
2. This!!!! http://www.dollreference.com/showbiz-babies.html
Oh, I can sooo feel a collection-addiction coming on! You can get Mama Cass, Bobbie Gentry, The Monkees...
(numbers 3 to 99+ on The List will, of course, appear over the next few weeks...)

Kitchen Sink Drama

To make amends to anyone whose stomach is churning after my description of the woefully-toxic kitchen, I am going to tell you about my bookcase.

It is the ubiquitous bookcase-named-after-a-goat, purchased solely to house the embarassingly large stash of house mags I accumulate . In these magazines are pictures of other people's kitchens, houses, lives... the ones where the living is effortlessly easy, and the stylist has primped the place for hours.

Somewhere between these magazines and my kitchen-from-hell stands my work in progress. An inherited 90's throwback, some of which I freecycled in favour of freestanding sideboards, with a pretty whitewashed brick wall (it was practical thermal insulation I stripped off, I learn later). And then it sort of morphed into a repository for all my vintage bits and pieces, and remains a more-than-one's-a-crowd nightmare where you have to be a contortionist to use the oven.

In the absence of a) cash, b) willpower and c) diy competence, I have ironically hung a fantastic 50's English Electric Company advert on the wall: "Whatever the size of your home, you've room for a refrigerator". As well as a black n white photo of Keef over the oven...

Maybe somewhere there's a mathematician with the inclination to come up with a formula to calculate how much time and money I've wasted on magazines x the amount I hate my kitchen. Until then, I think I just live in the wrong house...