The Kitchen project of Doom

As you can see from these pictures our kitchen was very old-fashioned and painted in interesting colours - I suspect the previous owners had some leftover paint from a couple of other jobs and decided to spruce up the kitchen doors with it!
There was no work surface when we moved in - apart from a pull-out chopping board under the sink. We bought a free-standing marble topped thingy to give some working space but half of it was underneath a wall unit so it didn't help that much.
Also the biggest cupboard had the old disconnected water cylinder inside taking up half of the space.
So after many attempts to persuade Melanie to let me remove the big cupboard I finally wore her down and she consented to the removal and replacement of two cupboards to give us some work surface.

So off I went with the first task - removing the offending cupboard and the cylinder.

One of the half dozen wallpapers I uncovered:

The plan was to move the washer to the back wall, leaving the old sink in the corner, then but a worktop over the top. But when I took the cover off the old sink it was all 'orrible and mouldy - so that changed the plans a little and it had to come out.

After removal of the big cupboard there was a capped-off pipe sticking out of the wall. I carefully traced the pipe and concluded it was definitely dead, so I started to saw the end off, only to get very very wet! Water was spraying all over the kitchen, I was soaked, I ran out to the front garden to the toby (stop-cock) and discovered the cover was stuck, so I had to run back to the house and grab a screwdriver then run back again to prise open the cover and turn off the water!
Fortunately there was the hole in the floor from the cylinder so there was only a centimetre or so of water in the kitchen!!
The local plumbers came out and sorted it for us - leaving a large hole in the wall.

Here's the wall after I patched up the hole and slapped on a couple of coats of paint.


And finally, the new wall cupboards


The new light - before I painted the ceiling

I got on with painting the existing cupboards and walls. The wallpaper was very well stuck and we had to buy a steam stripper to remove it.

We got the plumbers back to remove the two mystery taps sticking out of the wall and the four seemingly dead pipes. They also put in the new washer connections.

Once the walls were done I started to install the new base units. By this time the plan had changed again and we were moving the washer to the other side of the room in order to be able to add a set of drawers and more worktop.

More painting and stripping:

At this point we had a freezer disaster - the freezer had a habit of icing up to the point where it pushed its door open then defrosted itself. This was the fourth time we'd let it happen, so we decided to get rid of the fridge and freezer and get a nice frost free fridge freezer. So I had to remove part of the cupboard I'd just painted so it would fit:

I also decided to remove the corner cupboard as we couldn't get to it anyway!

The new fridge freezer - lovely!

We planned a second phase to replace the sink unit and also move it along a bit to make room for the cooker we really want - if we can ever afford it! I realised that the sink unit had to be done before I could get the flooring down, so we left things alone for a few weeks.

Buying the last couple of units inspired me to get the back cupboards finished.


Then it was time to do the sink! I'd planned it carefully so that we wouldn't need to move the existing wall-mounted tap, just replace it with one that didn't drip or have creaky plastic knobs!

A good weekend's work I think! I did the plumbing myself this time and even put in a tap for the dishwasher! We were going to wait a while before getting one but it was on special :)

Then the final job was to do the laminate flooring. Noodle helped a lot with this - mainly by dropping her toy in the middle of any sawdust that was present - or in the dustpan. It was so nice to finally get rid of that lino!

And here is the finished kitchen at last!

Big Update

Hi, sorry for being rather lazy with the updates this year.
We've been up to a few things and here they are.
(sorry, I've gone picture mad as usual)

Firstly, Noodle has been ill :(

A few weeks ago she woke us up a few times in the night and she was all agitated. At 5am she woke me up and was frothing at the mouth.

Melanie called me when I was on the train to work to say Noodle was having a full-on fit - she fell over and was twitching and unable to move. She then got all vicious and tried to bite Melanie. (she's never so much as growled at anyone). Noodle couldn't get up or move her back legs for a few minutes.

I rushed home and we took her to the vet where she had another frothing incident.
They took blood for tests and we took Noodle home and she still wouldn't stop pacing. She started frothing again so Melanie took her back in for observation.

Noodle had another grand mal seizure at the vets and they put her in a drip. She came home that night and had more seizures in the night.
She was on the drip for another two days and at one point she was so bad they were planning to put her into a coma to help her recover.

Fortunately she started to get better on the drip and gradually came out of it.

It was horrible to see her so completely out of control and not being able to do anything for her (except administer medicine up the bum - not very nice!).

For a few days she was not herself and very grumpy and subdued - she even growled at Sam when he wanted to play. She gradually came back to her normal happy self and now seems to have forgotten all about it.

It could be epilepsy that might return or it could be something poisonous that she'd eaten. The vet says we need to wait a year before we can assume it was poison.

Once she was feeling better I gave her a haircut!

Sam's growing up quickly and is getting much bigger!

He's allowed out now (but not in the dark yet) and has discovered cicadas. He likes to bring them in alive, torment them in the house and leave them dead on the carpet.

Trying to make friends with Meg and Mog

He likes to climb on your shoulders and lick your head - ew!

He's done this trick a few times!







He's tried to kill both of us!

Greedy cat!!

A couple of weeks ago we went to see Billy Connolly in Wellington. A very funny man but it was a little disappointing that we'd heard a fair bit of his material before.

We visited the colossal squid at Te Papa

We went into Wellington on Waitangi Day

We went to a free concert in the Botanic Gardens

We found little crabs in our mussels!!

Some random photos from my office window

Two cruise ships in at once. There's been two or three cruise ships a week in Wellington for the last few weeks. Lots of lost looking tourists wandering around clutching maps.


Window cleaners next door


Wellington CBD and The Terrace

We went to Martinborough Fair

We were excited to find the first jacket spud place we've seen in NZ!



It was a bit hot!

I polished the car

Added more blue pipes


and fitted some lovely bling 18s (well I needed 4 tyres so it was rude not to!)

And of course the car sailed through its warrant of fitness with no issues.

Oh yeah and I had it dyno tested to find out how many horsepowers and torques it has