Tuesday, August 29, 2006

Questa semper et shinius benchtopinium

The above faux-Latin translates as "We now have shiny new benchtops (thanks to Zeus and his all conquering might)".

Which, of course, anyone who studied faux-Latin at school should have been able to parse, genuflect and ultimately, translate.

In the photos the benchtops are still covered, in places, by as, we say in faux-Latin, 'Protectivus Plasticuum'. The 'Sinkus' is in but not connected and the hole for the 'Cook Topinicum' has been cut. Bit stange really, they create this huge benchtop for you and then gouge great chunks of it out. However, as the Romans might say, 'Que Sera Sera'.







Thursday, August 24, 2006

Chip and Dale

There's an old Warner Brothers cartoon featuring chipmunks Chip and Dale where the tree in which the boys co-habit is cut down while they are out. When they get back to the site where their tree home used to be all they see is a stump and a logging truck speeding off in the distance. They follow the truck knowing that that is where their home has gone. They follow their timber home through what it becomes - chairs, tables, sideboards and excitingly the cabinet of a television.

Fortunately for them the truck with their tree and what it has become goes past where they used to live. They derail the truck and build the bit of furniture into their former home stacking it up like their old tree with the television at the top of it, pride of place. Chip and Dale are very excited by this turn of events. At the end of the cartoon we see them sitting in front of the blank screen of the television. Then one of them says, "Won't it be wonderful when we get electricity".

That's how it has been at Chateau Glenunga. We now have electricity.

Below you will see a picture of the light above the sink, the lights in the pull out pantries (there are two of them), the lights in the overhead cupboards, a picture of our frosted clear perspex door with its 10cm wide stainless steel strip and the heat lamps over the plating-up-area.










Tuesday, August 22, 2006

Alien Residents

It is all getting a bit untidy at the Chateau.

The octagenerian resident of Room 14 is leaving piles of unwashed dishes everywhere; the wife of the itinerant door-to-door salesperson refuses to pick up after herself; and the strange guy constantly hallucinating creates little piles of objects around which you have to navigate.

No, none of the people above exist. But there's so much stuff around, and it is getting increasingly difficult to keep it all under control. So even if the people above don't exisit perhaps their detritus does.

We need our kitchen back so we can get our nice little Chateau back. Sigh.

In the kitchen itself though, all is 'go'. The splashbacks are going up - plates of aluminium straight from Bunnings and some more wiring is being done today.



Magnolia

Our purple magnolia is in bloom. We bought it last year, I think, and it has grown quite nicely and is now about 1.5m tall. It had about 10 flowers on it. It would be nice to have the common pinky, scented one too.

Thursday, August 17, 2006

Getting Plastered

They've taken our bench tops away! Crimminy - We got cupboards but no bench tops. And we won't have benchtops for a while yet. You see they have taken the bench tops away to have them wrapped in stainless steel. Why it takes up to three weeks for this process to occur, I have no idea. However, when we had the aluminium doors installed in the hallway they took six weeks to be constructed. But when they turned up to be installed and they were primrose yellow, and not clear coated aluminium (silver coloured) as we had ordered, it only took one working day for them to custom make the new pair and have them installed. Hmmmm.

Anywho . . .

So, as you can see from the photos, the hole where the world's worst extractor fan used to be has now been blocked up. A couple of bricks and cement now lays that disastrous Exxon-Valdez-type-oil-spillage-era of the kitchen to rest. (For a more complete explanation on the ex-extractor fan see entry below.)

David, apart from filling the ex-extractor hole, has been getting plastered in the kitchen. He has been filling all the gaps where the tile cement has taken off the wall plaster, ready for the splash backs, which will go on pretty soon.







Sunday, August 13, 2006

Clothing the Bare Bones

On Saturday the cupboard 'carcasses', as they are called, were clothed with their finery, doors, handles and other ephemera. They now look pretty. Steve did all the work and John made sure what was happening was what was wanted. It was all good. In the pictures Steve is playing with the pantries. Plural - two pantries. Lots of storage. Bliss!!









Friday, August 11, 2006

Cupboards Ahoy!

The cupboards have started to take shape. No longer are they flat pieces of chip board just lazing away flatly. They have now met each other and been placed at 90 degree angles, thus taking on form. They seem to be happy with this arrangement as not one of them has, as yet, decamped to go back to its former flat state. As you can see from the pictures, the kitchen is far from finished but progress has surely been made.





Thursday, August 10, 2006

Flat Stack

Our kitchen cupboards have arrived. Only problem is that they are in 1001 pieces. They're all flat and they're all stacked in the carport. In the next two days the flat stack should become three-dimensional and turn into cupboards. Not miraculously, of course, but with the expertise of two seasoned cupboard assemblers and installers. Exciting innit!


Mysterious Wiring

The action continues in our kitchen at the Chateau. The electrician and the plumber have visited. The electrician has put all the new wiring in and many a mysterious cable now emanates from the 'Beirut after the mortar attack' decorated walls. The plumber has installed a larger gas line to cope with our soon-to-be-installed industrial-strentgh cook top. What is best though is that the world's most useless and ineffective kitchen exhaust fan has now been ripped out of the wall leaving a relatively welcome hole instead. The fan actually was very good at extraction. It extracted fat from the air which it then collected on its blades. Once enough had been stored up it would then bleed down the wall in 'Amityville Horror' rivulets. I may go out to the skip, find the old exhaust fan and give it a few swift kicks tonight.





Saturday, August 05, 2006

Demolition

Today the action began in earnest. John, our project manager who also coordinated the bathroom renovation, arrived at 10am. Firstly we cleared out the kitchen putting all the crockery, food, saucepans and whatnot into 20 Officeworks archive boxes. The plumber, Shane, then arrived to turn off the gas and disconnet the dishwsher and sink. After removing the worst designed sink known to man or beast and horrible gas leaky cooktop, John got stuck into ripping the cupboards apart. Mainly with his bare hands - chipboard flew in all directions. David transported the pieces to the skip or sawed then down to size to fit and I packed the kitchen stuff up into the boxes and stacked them. Once the cupboards were removed it was time to chip off the tiles and peel off any left over lino on the floor. Then it was time to clean up and for David to soak in a hot bath to rest his weary body.

Pictures include the pile of appliances we've had in the living room for a month or so - oven, cooktop, sink, lights, taps . . . Also picture of the kitchen stuff packed into boxes and the rest are self explanatory.













Friday, August 04, 2006

Bathroom Renovation 2005

Below are posted the final pictures of the bathroom renovation. We finally had the frosting film put on the glass door, so no more baking paper stuck onto it with masking tape to attain some privacy.

















Thursday, August 03, 2006

The Hallway

Just before the new light in the kitchen was installed, and just before Monty and Jim visited from 'Perf', David completed painting the hallway. We were in a bit of a quandry with what to do with it for a while. But it was obvious in the end. Use the same colours as the lounge room. So as you can see it's half green and half orange.

The New Light

We bought the new lights for the kitchen last year while searching for lights for the bathroom. We bought them as soon as we saw them as they were just what we wanted. And if we didn't grab them, we knew we'd never find anything as interesting again. We've been back to the store since and they don't stock them any more. Our electrician had half a day spare so they were suddenly and unexpectedly installed.