kimbofo

The new kitchen: before and after

You may remember that earlier this year we had our kitchen and living room refurbished. It was a rather stressful and drawn out process, and even though I was delighted when it was all finished, I never really got around to posting any pictures.

This afternoon our builder paid us a brief visit. He's had a whole bunch of flyers produced for distribution across London and wanted to show them to us. It seems our bathroom, refurbished last year, and our kitchen are on the verge of becoming famous. Yes, he's used photographs of both on the front of his leaflet.

Anyway, without further ado, here's what our tatty old kitchen used to look like. Please note the photos were taken after we'd pretty much cleaned the place out in preparation for the builder's arrival. You'll even note my little experiment in looking for the right paint colour for a feature wall. In the end, I didn't even bother choosing a colour, because once the new kitchen units were in place and the walls were tiled it didn't seem necessary.

Refurbishment, phase 2

After a long day at work and a late appointment I came home to an empty, echoing shell of a living room and kitchen tonight. Yes, the builders are back!

Both rooms have been completely stripped bare. The living room contains one lonely sofa and armchair and a fridge; the kitchen is just an empty room with pipes on the wall. There's no lighting, no heating, no flooring, no cupboards.

I'm reduced to eating M&S sandwiches in the bedroom, and will have to fill the kettle for my 9pm cuppa from the tap in the bathroom!

Apparently the builders had to make two trips in their huge white van to cart all our unwanted belongings away. Admittedly this included quite a bit of shoddy old furniture, including a kitchen table and a sideboard, and a lot of chipped crockery.

I'm not surprised our "cull" comprised two van's worth, because we spent all Easter weekend, from Saturday afternoon right through until midnight last night, sorting through stuff -- working out what to keep, what to throw away, what to give to charity and what to put in storage.

I'll be pleased when the project is complete, although I'm sure there'll be a few headaches along the way. Stay tuned for before and after shots sometime in the future. If it's anything like last year's bathroom and bedroom refurbishment it should be worth all the pain and effort.

Limescale woes

What no one ever tells you when you get your bathroom refurbished is that London's water is so hard, so calcium-enriched, that it will be impossible to keep chromeware and glass sparkling clean.

Within a day -- yes, one single day -- of having our glass showerscreen installed it became caked in a white chalky residue called limescale. This was before we'd used the shower proper and had resulted simply from the builders checking that the showerhead worked.

Obviously, when we started using our new bathroom, the limescale situation got worse. I have taken to wiping down the the showerscreen with window cleaner every day, to practically no effect, and polishing the taps with a microfibre cloth.

The situation has not been helped by the fact that you can't use ordinary cleaning products on Travertine tiles, so I've had to do a bit of internet research to find something that is safe to use on natural stone but strong enough to remove limescale.

Consequently, I have just spent an hour in the bathroom getting completely high on HG Shower Shield, which supposedly keeps dirt and limescale at bay for months at a time. I used quite a bit of it on the showerscreen, having first removed the limescale using another HG-branded product (it took five goes), and put a few dabs of it on the taps and chrome heated towel rail.

I'm keeping my fingers crossed that it works. The showerscreen looks amazing right now -- it's sparkling like refracted diamonds -- but goodness knows whether it will survive the twice-daily onslaught of calcium-rich water to which we subject it.

But the shower valve and tap is another story. Despite almost rubbing a hole through the wall, I simply cannot remove the limescale stains from the chromeware. Various products and two different types of microfibre cloths have simply not worked.

There goes any idea of having a stainless steel kitchen -- it'd look shite within a couple of days!

New-look bedroom

Thought it was about time I showed you our "new-look" bedroom.  This is what our horrible mould-ridden bedroom looked like before we spent about £1 million pounds getting our bedroom, bathroom and hallway refurbished.

The photograph isn't exactly in focus and I hadn't bothered to make the bed or clean up, but it gives you a good idea of what the room was like, although it doesn't show you the ridiculous storage of our clothes charity shop-style on two rails, on the wall at the foot of the bed! This was because the built-in-robe, on the right-hand external wall, was so damp we could not use it.

But that wasn't the only thing wrong with the room. The walls, near the ceiling, were stained from our battle with mould; the polyester carpet was moth-ridden and bloody ugly to boot; and the bed springs in the double-bed had long since died a miserable death.  The only decent thing about the room was the curtains, complete with black-out lining, that I had bought a couple of years earlier from John Lewis.

My new fat friend

I don't often buy myself "things" because all my money seems to go on bills (phone, mortgage etc), food and drink. But yesterday, enroute to the tube station, I walked past a shop with this little piggy in the window and knew I had to go in and buy him.

He's a rather chunky chrome money-box, who now has pride of place on my new chocolate coloured chest of drawers. In fact, he matches the chrome drawer handles perfectly.

Isn't he cute?

The new bathroom: before and after

So, after about four weeks of building work, I'm pleased to announce that our new-look bathroom is finally finished.

This is what it looked like before the wreckers came in and destroyed it all. Notice the lovely mould on the grout and ceilings! 

Flat-pack furniture

Earlier in the week I thought it would be a good idea to buy some new furniture for our "new" bedroom.

I opted for flatpack furniture from Argos, on the basis it was about £500 cheaper than John Lewis for a chest of drawers.

I am currently about one-third of the way through building that chest of drawers. It has taken me about two hours to get to this point. I have a back ache and a nasty looking blister on my right index finger.

When I initially ripped open the box, pulled out all the parts -- a confusing array of timber planks in varying widths and lengths, combined with two plastic bags filled with an assortment of screws and "plugs" -- I almost gave up.

A glimpse at the instructions -- an elaborate-looking diagram with no explanatory text -- made me wish I'd paid that extra £500 for something already fully assembled.

Now I realise why flatpack furniture is so cheap!

But what am I telling you all this for? Back to work, me thinks.

The bedroom's finished!

The walls have been painted Farrow & Ball tallow.

The ceiling, radiator and skirting board are eggshell white.

The door has been painted and a new chrome door handle put in place.

The mouldy built-in-robe has been demolished and a brand new one, built on a different wall, has been put in place.

New Berber-style cream-coloured 100 per cent wool carpet has been fitted.

And a new king-size bed with a chocolate leather headboard and a memory foam mattress has pride of place.

Yes, the bedroom has now been completely refurbished. It looks like a hotel room. And seems much more spacious now that the wardrobe is in a new position.

Unfortunately, because the entire room looks so fresh and new, our existing bedside tables, in whitewashed pine, look a little on the scruffy side. I've now ordered a new set in a chocolate coloured stain, along with a chest of drawers.

I'll post photographs when it's all in place. In the meantime, I cannot wait to sink into bed -- under my new summer-weight duvet (£8 from Primark!!) -- because I haven't had a proper night's sleep in three weeks! Zzzzzzz.