Slowly, slowly, I’m beginning to feel settled.
Up to this point, I’ve felt constantly on edge. It’s not the house, that’s lovely: quiet, solid, the right size and shape, and now with sensible kitchen and bathroom. No, it’s that feeling of being adrift because you don’t know where things are, and the daily pattern of living is broken.
In every photo you see here, there are shelves waiting to be filled, boxes waiting to be unpacked, empty boxes waiting to be filled again. It’s a constant process. If there’s a gap, it won’t stay that way for long! The delightful part, though, is that there’s enough space for everything!
Suddenly, though, I’ve turned some sort of corner, and can lay my hands on things – or at least, know where they are. My kitchen equipment is (mostly) here, and the things that aren’t I’m seriously reconsidering. I have some hand sewing, the Days for Girls hexies. I have some of my books, including some I haven’t seen for several years because they were still in boxes, buried in the store room.
Those lovely tiles I’d sourced for the kitchen splashback..? Not happening. It has been six weeks since I placed the order, and they couldn’t give me any kind of date for their arrival, so I’ve cancelled it, and am going with something pretty similar but in shades of grey and white. I’m sorry about the colour, but these new ones are also very nice, and incidentally, half the price. There will be a good few left over, so I’m considering using those in the bathroom to extend the height of the tiling in the shower enclosure, which is adequate for short people (me) but not really for the more generously built (the Husband).
The guest room is entirely finished. Our bedroom still needs two chests of drawers brought in, blackout blinds and new curtains, and mirrors and pictures hung. The bathroom needs the tile skirting/baseboard done, the tiles in the shower extended up, a shelf installed beside the loo, the walls and ceiling filled, sanded and painted and a picture hung. The living room needs some new side tables (our old ones simply don’t fit, but I’ll repurpose those in my sewing room), one wall decorating and lots of bits and pieces taken out of boxes and installed on the shelves waiting for them. The kitchen still needs lots of work: filling, sanding, painting, tiling, boxes unpacking, etc.
On a subject close to my heart, the sewing room is currently the junk depository/furniture assembly area/tool storage. Once all that’s cleared, it doesn’t need anything doing to it apart from moving in bookshelves and all my sewing stuff, and then a serious vacuuming. The blue wall is already blue, just waiting for shelves to go up. I grit my teeth every time I see something new added to the assemblage, but it will change, I will have a sewing room, and sooner rather than later.
So that’s the latest. One of these days I’ll have a huge lie-in. One of these days….
You’re looking at my next renovation task: getting the kitchen splash-back tiled. Are these not the perfect tiles for a quilter? You can almost name the blocks they were designed from. I know they’re not the ones I originally chose, but I feel a sneaking sense of relief; these are smaller and easier to work with, a whole lot cheaper, plus easier to get hold of. And I think it’s probably clear from the photo that the kitchen isn’t exactly going to be short of colour anyway!
