Friday 22 October 2010

I girded my loins,


rolled up my sleeves and made a start in my extremely grubby kitchen!

I did the window, sill and wall around it a couple of weeks back and surprisingly, it wasn't too bad a job. Adrian helped me clean the top of these wall cabinets as I still don't feel very safe high up on the stepladder.

The vegetable dishes and meat platters on top of the cabinets were washed and rehomed in the sideboard in the dining room. Some of the other items have been found new homes elsewhere in the house, too.

I've now got some of my electric kitchen gadgets on top of the cabinets, which is a much more sensible place for them to live than their previous home ~ the top of our wardrobe! I haven't yet tackled the shelves ~ which explains my severe cropping of these two photos LOL

I took the big chicken ornaments off the windowsill and put them up on the cabinets, along with my Le Creuset kettle which I don't use but love to look at ;-)

On Monday I hopped over to the other side of the kitchen ~ literally, one hop and you're there since the room is so small! As you can see, the kitchen is yet another room in need of decoration but for the time being a good clean-up will just have to suffice :-) The nasty area between the two wall cabinets is where we previously had an extractor-fan. It didn't work very well, was terribly noisy and really horrible to try to keep clean ~ so out it went one day whilst Adrian was at work ;-D The nasty yellow stains on the cabinets are where they had pine-effect cladding stuck to them; frankly, it was beyond cleaning so off it came. At some point, I may well decoupage these cabinet sides :-)

It took me a very long time but eventually I got this cabinet, the little corner shelf and the area around them cleaned. It's a job that hadn't been done since way before my back went, so as you can imagine the grease, grime and dust I had to work my way through way quite horrendous! The larger cabinet houses the gas boiler, which I didn't clean as my sense of balance is still not terribly good! Adrian said he will clean it for me on Sunday ~ I did clean the door, though!

The wall still looks pretty horrible but at least I know it's clean now :-)

It was very sunny when I took these 'after' photos on Wednesday, which made it a tad difficult to take half-decent photos in the kitchen ~ you'll just have to excuse these, I'm afraid!

As you can see, I've had a bit of a change-around and there seems to be a lot more empty space around the hob now!

The microwave was previously on the other side of the room but since I can't really use this little worktop corner to actually work on, I thought it would be the ideal place for the microwave. Plus, of course, it means I now have a fair bit more working space on the other side of the kitchen :-)

I really should have taken a photo of this little cupboard before I emptied it out ;-) It had become a dumping ground for empty storage jars, cutlery from Aunt Mary, baking dishes, etc, which was a very bad use of space considering how small my kitchen is!

I've now got the tea, coffee, sugar, etc off precious worktop space and into the cupboard. The 'bedtime' drinks were previously in the larder, along with yet-to-be-used boxes of tea-bags, so I've moved them here too :-) I would really love to set out a cute tea-tray on the worktop, but alas I have to conserve as much space as I possibly can.

This little collection of jugs was previously sitting on top of the china cabinet in the dining room. I seem to have gathered quite a lot of orangey colours in the kitchen so I thought I may as well add to it! One of my friends said that it looks like a little village on top of the cabinet :-)

I decided to pare down the display on this little corner shelf, to make it easier to keep everything clean.

I bought the teapot on the bottom shelf fairly recently; it is marked 'Japan' on its base. The one above is marked 'Made in Germany' and belonged to Aunt Mary. The cute little cat teapot was a gift from Beverly when she was a little girl :-)

I made these two little pictures a number of years ago, soon after I first started to do cross-stitch. I didn't take photos of their backs because I didn't finish them off very well at all! I even put the top one in its frame the wrong way round ~ hence the word 'Taiwan' is on full show LOL One day I will tidy them up.....maybe ;-)

I think these are chive flowers.....

.....and these look like borage flowers :-)

This little chap is sitting quite happily on the kitchen windowsill beside the red glass vase. He is cosy, snug and bathed in a rosy glow when the sun shines through the vase :-)

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