Cooking with gas (and electricity!)

Monday 21 July, plumbers arrive early to commence connecting everything from dishwasher to downpipes, sink to stove. I have various appointments, so Peter is supervising. As a result, my message about not bothering with the shelf that the kitchen people have supplied with the sink cupboard gets lost, and the plumbers go to all kinds of trouble to fit the pipes through the shelf. However it is so good to have running water that I don't care. Peter organises a nest of powerboards and cords so that we can plug in stove and dishwasher, and for the first time in 9 months I cook a meal on the stove!
We have another communication disconnect, finding on Wednesday that the electrician has told the builder he is not coming until Friday (once again, after two days of being on early alert). The good news on Wednesday was that Bluestone delivered our recovered sofa and dining chairs, and they look great.
On Friday at 7am we greet electricians Chris and Jason who have all the wiring finished by mid-morning. At last, we can move the fridge and microwave, the last bits of the kitchen still residing in the middle room. The fridge (like us) is elderly, and when we try to move it into its new, snug-fitting cupboard, we discover that (like us) it has a lean to the left that seems beyond adjustment. We eventually succeed in getting it in place by propping up the back corner with a bit of wood, but it has taken the rest of the morning. In the afternoon, we make a sortie to Ikea to buy all kinds of drawer fittings and such-like to help organise our new spaces. We also buy a new thingy to put the TV on (our old cabinet, also Ikea, dates from pre-flat screen days and is excessively large), and two new lightweight chairs, as we've decided that the chairs from our old three piece suite are too heavy for the room.
Between Monday (plumbers) and Friday (electricians) I have been slowly escorting items from the old kitchen cabinets in the garage to the new kitchen cabinets. Over the weekend this continues, and Peter joins me to shift larger items on Sunday. So we now have just about everything back in the kitchen (plus a couple of boxes to go to the op shop), and in the rest of the living area a dining table and chairs, 3 coffee tables, a sofa and two chairs in flat packs waiting for us to get the strength to assemble them. Tomorrow perhaps.
From the kick-off, I predicted that it would take until my birthday to have a liveable house again. I'm about right (birthday is tomorrow), although there are still Things to be Done. But it's a short list now, and nothing to prevent us having a dinner party tomorrow night. Whoopeee!

Kitchen complete, but not yet functioning

After our return from Tasmania, we have a week of early rising in anticipation of further action on the kitchen. When nothing happens and we've got to Wednesday, we contact Dave (kitchen) on who tells us that he has told Dave (builder) that the drawer and door fronts and side panels won't be coming until Friday. Dave (builder) has no recollection of this message, and so hasn't passed it on. Anyway we have one peaceful day on Thursday when we knew nothing was happening. On Friday the rest of the kitchen arrives and is fitted, and looks pretty good. We await the bins to go in the bin drawer, and some side rails for the deep pot drawers.
We now expect builders, plumbers and sparkies to come to fit appliances, hopefully starting Monday. Until we have sink connected, stove and dishwasher functioning and fridge in place, we are still camping in the middle room. I am decidedly 'over' this, especially as each week I tell myself that this is the last time I will crawl under the bench to get out into the lightwell to cook on the Weber. In the freezing cold. I'm hanging out for the stove, Peter for the dishwasher as he is sick of grovelling around in a bucket in the laundry sink in the bathroom.
Over the weekend we treat ourselves to a Karcher and use it to clean up the tiles. It's going to take several iterations to get them really clean, but they already look heaps better. Pictures to follow, preferably WITH appliances installed.

Floored, and half a kitchen

Tilers come on schedule and take 3 days to do the tricky and time-consuming job of extending the old floor out to the new wall. The new tiles we found that were the right size and material have small lugs on the base, which gives the tiler a problem because they are going to sit slightly proud of the old ones. We tell him we are prepared to live with that, but he can't cope with an imperfect result, and spends hours with an angle grinder removing the lugs from the tiles before they are laid. The meeting of old and new looks much better than we anticipated, given that the old tiles have darkened and are not exactly the same colour as the new. Final grouting of the tiles happens on Wednesday, we hold the Memorial Service for my brother in the afternoon.
Next morning we head to Tassie for much needed R&R. On the tram on the way to the bus on the way to the plane we receive a call from the kitchen people, asking if they can deliver the kitchen early! Of course we say yes, provided the builder an organise access. When we return the following Tuesday we find the kitchen cabinets are not only delivered, but are in place, albeit minus doors and drawer fronts. We leap out of bed early for the next two days in anticipation of kitchen completion activity, but nothing happens until Friday, when a couple of blokes come to fit the sink (which was in the house all the time, but they didn't ask and we didn't think to tell them as we thought they were just going to drop off the cabinets, with installation happening later).
So once again, we are looking forward to next week, when we really should see some action: doors and drawer fronts from the kitchen guys, and builders, plumbers and sparkies back to fit stove, sink, dishwasher, range hood etc. And hopefully connect up the stormwater - we have lakes in the back garden each time it rains.

Half a kitchen