Showing posts with label kitchen. Show all posts
Showing posts with label kitchen. Show all posts
Saturday, November 20, 2010
Wednesday, August 18, 2010
Coming down the home straight
We're moving in at the weekend - I am SO excited! There has been loads of action up at the house this week: the floor finally dried enough for workmen to come in on Monday, and since then we've had people putting up the chandelier, touching up the internal painting, fitting shelves and hanging rails in the wardrobes and cleaning up. Officially the Council inspection happens tomorrow (Friday), after which we can move in as long as the Council's inspector gives us the all-clear. I've spoken to Warren about potential issues, but I hope there aren't any: Council has been checking the building process periodically anyway so one would think there won't be any surprises.
This is the floor in darling daughter's bedroom. Everyone was so suspicious of an oiled finish (especially the flooring guy!), and yet when they see the final product they're amazed and impressed. Poor Phil may find himself having to become an expert in oiled finishes because Warren likes it so much he's decided to go for it himself!
This is a view down from the bedroom end of the house all the way through to the TV room at the other end. Lovely! I really like the finish: it isn't really shiny, but it has brought out the natural grain of the wood. It is moppable, waterproof and reasonably stain resistant, and any scratches can be repaired with an oily rag.
This is the island unit, complete with oven and gas cook top. And it's fabulous. The cupboard and drawer fronts are oiled Tasmanian Oak: a neutral veneer that will set off rather than compete with the completely MAD wood that will shortly be going on the big unit. See further down for more images!
And THIS is our gorgeous chandelier. Weve talked about it for ages, and here it is, after almost 4 years swathed in bubblewrap in a crate! I hadn't realised the electricians were about to put it up or I would have made sure I cleaned and rewired the crystals beforehand... as it was, I spent a precarious hour up a very tall ladder, wiring in the crystals, washing and polishing them all individually, and changing the low-wattage CF bulbs. I want to move to LED bulbs but they're expensive at the moment and I actually had the replacement CF bulbs, so as and when they begin to give out I'll investigate the price of LED replacements again.
We owe thanks to our former friend Claire in Bristol, who gave us this chandelier when we bought our previous Victorian-era house in Redland, Bristol. She apparently found it at auction (?) or possibly an antique shop in the Cotswolds and for years hung it in her own place, but when she moved into a Georgian cottage with significantly lower ceilings she found it wasn't suitable and it spent a few years languishing in her attic before she gave it to us. Sadly our friendship hit the rocks a few years ago, despite the fact that she is darling daughter's one and only god(less) mother, and we haven't seen her for a while. But whenever we look at the chandelier we think kind thoughts of Claire, and miss her. Anyway, it was lovely to see the look on darling daughter's face this week when she saw it hung up: she was four years old when we moved back to Australia, and she's eight now. Even so, half her life away, she remembered the chandelier and is thrilled to see it again.
The decorative brass chain is too short - goodness knows where the rest of it went! - but I've managed to find an exact reproduction from Antique Lamp Supplies in the USA and after a brief and effective email exchange (thank you Michael Barnes!) a 2 foot length is being shipped over by USP as we speak, and so the final position of the chandelier will be lower and it will become more of a visual feature in the room.
TALKING OF VISUAL FEATURES!!! THIS is the black-hearted Sassafrass veneer we're using on the big kitchen cupboards. Wow!
Because I'm itching to have some idea of what the finished cupboards will be like I did a couple of mock-ups using some other photos I've taken of the kitchen as it progresses. They clearly won't give you a proper idea but I needed to imagine, so here they are, despite their numerous faults!
The perspective is wrong, the colours probably aren't correct as the wood hasn't been oiled yet so we don't really know what it will look like but... the mock-ups do give me some idea, and we all love it!
This is the floor in darling daughter's bedroom. Everyone was so suspicious of an oiled finish (especially the flooring guy!), and yet when they see the final product they're amazed and impressed. Poor Phil may find himself having to become an expert in oiled finishes because Warren likes it so much he's decided to go for it himself!
This is a view down from the bedroom end of the house all the way through to the TV room at the other end. Lovely! I really like the finish: it isn't really shiny, but it has brought out the natural grain of the wood. It is moppable, waterproof and reasonably stain resistant, and any scratches can be repaired with an oily rag.
This is the island unit, complete with oven and gas cook top. And it's fabulous. The cupboard and drawer fronts are oiled Tasmanian Oak: a neutral veneer that will set off rather than compete with the completely MAD wood that will shortly be going on the big unit. See further down for more images!
And THIS is our gorgeous chandelier. Weve talked about it for ages, and here it is, after almost 4 years swathed in bubblewrap in a crate! I hadn't realised the electricians were about to put it up or I would have made sure I cleaned and rewired the crystals beforehand... as it was, I spent a precarious hour up a very tall ladder, wiring in the crystals, washing and polishing them all individually, and changing the low-wattage CF bulbs. I want to move to LED bulbs but they're expensive at the moment and I actually had the replacement CF bulbs, so as and when they begin to give out I'll investigate the price of LED replacements again.
We owe thanks to our former friend Claire in Bristol, who gave us this chandelier when we bought our previous Victorian-era house in Redland, Bristol. She apparently found it at auction (?) or possibly an antique shop in the Cotswolds and for years hung it in her own place, but when she moved into a Georgian cottage with significantly lower ceilings she found it wasn't suitable and it spent a few years languishing in her attic before she gave it to us. Sadly our friendship hit the rocks a few years ago, despite the fact that she is darling daughter's one and only god(less) mother, and we haven't seen her for a while. But whenever we look at the chandelier we think kind thoughts of Claire, and miss her. Anyway, it was lovely to see the look on darling daughter's face this week when she saw it hung up: she was four years old when we moved back to Australia, and she's eight now. Even so, half her life away, she remembered the chandelier and is thrilled to see it again.
The decorative brass chain is too short - goodness knows where the rest of it went! - but I've managed to find an exact reproduction from Antique Lamp Supplies in the USA and after a brief and effective email exchange (thank you Michael Barnes!) a 2 foot length is being shipped over by USP as we speak, and so the final position of the chandelier will be lower and it will become more of a visual feature in the room.
TALKING OF VISUAL FEATURES!!! THIS is the black-hearted Sassafrass veneer we're using on the big kitchen cupboards. Wow!
Because I'm itching to have some idea of what the finished cupboards will be like I did a couple of mock-ups using some other photos I've taken of the kitchen as it progresses. They clearly won't give you a proper idea but I needed to imagine, so here they are, despite their numerous faults!
The perspective is wrong, the colours probably aren't correct as the wood hasn't been oiled yet so we don't really know what it will look like but... the mock-ups do give me some idea, and we all love it!
Tuesday, July 13, 2010
So near, so far - kitchen update
Not much work has happened on our house since the superb effort of the week before our party in June, which does rather leave you thinking how much could be achieved if that level of activity was maintained! I think we're working on the Pareto principle now: we've got to the (less than) 20% of the job that is left, which is going to take 80% of the effort to get it finished. I think I've mentioned before that I decided early on NOT to get wound up by the building process, but it has been hard in recent weeks not to feel increasingly frustrated. Of the four houses being built by our builder I believe ours was the first to commence and will be the last to be finished (unless my information is inaccurate). There has been illness, public holidays and bad weather to contend with along the way, and we've managed to maintain reasonable good humour throughout, but I have my suspicions that part of the reason for the extended build is simply this: we weren't shouting as loudly as the other developers... Luckily I don't 'do' resentment and I am absolutely sure that the quality of the finished building will more than compensate us for the delays!
So where are we now? I had understood we were waiting for Phil, the floor man, to sand and oil our floors before the kitchen units in the main room would be installed. I don't know whether it is because he has been, how shall I say it, unhelpful with his schedule that we have waited this long and that the decision has been taken to put the cupboard carcases in place before his task starts but anyway, we now have the bare bones of the kitchen in situ and it looks great.
Looking from the doorway at the bedroom end of the building into the main room you can see how the larger storage unit acts as a room divider. This side of it, currently blank, will have a bookshelf/cupboard unit in black-hearted sassafrass veneer that will make a feature of its size. We're using a fairly minimal palate of wood, grey-white paintwork and our black leather furniture in the main rooms, which will be enlivened by our things: books, ceramics, cushions etc in brighter colours so the finished bookcase, once populated with 'stuff' will be a big part of the overall interior decoration of this room. The space on this side of the unit will be the quiet lounge i.e. a CD player but no television! Guess where you'll find me, crashed out on the sofa with a good book...
From the other side you can see the adjustable interior of the large unit, waiting for its oiled sassafrass-veneered doors. There will be no visible handles as we're using the push-touch closing mechanism on the big doors so that your eye isn't distracted from the distinctive grain of the wood.
The 'U' shape of the cupboards in the foreground is deceptive: the space will eventually house the gas cooker, and the whole thing will be fronted with a wood veneer panel and covered over with a neutral, slightly cream-coloured engineered stone benchtop that will extend forwards to form a breakfast bar at the front of the island unit. A gas cooktop and a small vegetable preparation sink will be inset into the stone benchtop which will otherwise be kept clear for food preparation. I know that is a laughable statement - what island unit is kept clear of clutter, you may well ask - but there is a deliberate strategy here in that the dishwasher and the large sink are all in the pantry, so plates etc have to be walked through into another room after meals. My personal bet is that the island unit will end up full of IT equipment (dearest husband) or (very unlikely!) my paperwork!
Looking out from the pantry towards the windows and the view gives you an idea of the whole structure...
... but I like the view from the deck outside, looking in. Can't you just imagine it in summer with the windows pulled back, friends wandering round of an evening with a drink in their hands, perhaps sitting at the breakfast bar while dinner's cooking? THIS is what we're looking forward to, and what will make it all worthwhile.
So where are we now? I had understood we were waiting for Phil, the floor man, to sand and oil our floors before the kitchen units in the main room would be installed. I don't know whether it is because he has been, how shall I say it, unhelpful with his schedule that we have waited this long and that the decision has been taken to put the cupboard carcases in place before his task starts but anyway, we now have the bare bones of the kitchen in situ and it looks great.
Looking from the doorway at the bedroom end of the building into the main room you can see how the larger storage unit acts as a room divider. This side of it, currently blank, will have a bookshelf/cupboard unit in black-hearted sassafrass veneer that will make a feature of its size. We're using a fairly minimal palate of wood, grey-white paintwork and our black leather furniture in the main rooms, which will be enlivened by our things: books, ceramics, cushions etc in brighter colours so the finished bookcase, once populated with 'stuff' will be a big part of the overall interior decoration of this room. The space on this side of the unit will be the quiet lounge i.e. a CD player but no television! Guess where you'll find me, crashed out on the sofa with a good book...
From the other side you can see the adjustable interior of the large unit, waiting for its oiled sassafrass-veneered doors. There will be no visible handles as we're using the push-touch closing mechanism on the big doors so that your eye isn't distracted from the distinctive grain of the wood.
The 'U' shape of the cupboards in the foreground is deceptive: the space will eventually house the gas cooker, and the whole thing will be fronted with a wood veneer panel and covered over with a neutral, slightly cream-coloured engineered stone benchtop that will extend forwards to form a breakfast bar at the front of the island unit. A gas cooktop and a small vegetable preparation sink will be inset into the stone benchtop which will otherwise be kept clear for food preparation. I know that is a laughable statement - what island unit is kept clear of clutter, you may well ask - but there is a deliberate strategy here in that the dishwasher and the large sink are all in the pantry, so plates etc have to be walked through into another room after meals. My personal bet is that the island unit will end up full of IT equipment (dearest husband) or (very unlikely!) my paperwork!
Looking out from the pantry towards the windows and the view gives you an idea of the whole structure...
... but I like the view from the deck outside, looking in. Can't you just imagine it in summer with the windows pulled back, friends wandering round of an evening with a drink in their hands, perhaps sitting at the breakfast bar while dinner's cooking? THIS is what we're looking forward to, and what will make it all worthwhile.
Monday, March 1, 2010
Progress Report #1: the house
OK, OK, I know... I haven't been very good at posting things recently! It's been a combination of being too busy elsewhere, poor internet connection and general laziness and I do apologize. To make up for it, here is a digest of recent photographs of the house, shortly to be followed by another post about what's been happening in the 'grounds'.
I thought you'd like to see a different view of the house, taken from the new earthworks above the studio. See the following post for details about all the excavation work. Soon (we hope!) the bare soil will be covered with grass and then shrubs (once we've worked out how to prevent the wallabies from eating any mass plantings). The tree ferns are beautiful and they are staying right where they are!
I do love this view of the house, nestled into the landscape. Some elements of that landscape look a bit raw at the moment, but that will change...
Inside the house the floor has been laid. This has had its frustrations, not least because the contractor deliberately bought the wrong grade of timber which, as it is milled specifically for each job, meant we couldn't return it.
We requested 'Feature Grade' which is the lowest quality, because it comes with all the knots and marks and colouration that we feel gives the wood some character. It was hard enough getting the guy to buy stringy bark for us (which we wanted because we like the look of it and it's locally grown) so we were furious when we found out he'd gone for 'Standard Grade'. His view was that we didn't really know what we wanted and that he didn't want to work with Feature Grade wood because he didn't want to fill all the holes! He simply couldn't comprehend that we didn't want him to fill the damned things, we wanted a floor with lumps and bumps in it!
This is the resulting flooring (complete with pencil marks), and it's OK. It is less bland than Premium Grade timber would have been, but also less lovely than Feature Grade... Our next battle is set to be about what treatment to put on it! The contractor likes polyurethane and we have specified a natural oil. His response was "I'll use OIL-BASED polyurethane", so as you can see, we have a problem - but I have told Warren that if the wrong product is used it will be sanded off at his own cost and the correct treatment will be applied!
This is a view towards the front door (which will also be oil-finished, just so you know!), with the planter in the foreground, having just been core-filled prior to being rendered.
A bath with a view!
I thought you'd like to see a different view of the house, taken from the new earthworks above the studio. See the following post for details about all the excavation work. Soon (we hope!) the bare soil will be covered with grass and then shrubs (once we've worked out how to prevent the wallabies from eating any mass plantings). The tree ferns are beautiful and they are staying right where they are!
I do love this view of the house, nestled into the landscape. Some elements of that landscape look a bit raw at the moment, but that will change...
Inside the house the floor has been laid. This has had its frustrations, not least because the contractor deliberately bought the wrong grade of timber which, as it is milled specifically for each job, meant we couldn't return it.
We requested 'Feature Grade' which is the lowest quality, because it comes with all the knots and marks and colouration that we feel gives the wood some character. It was hard enough getting the guy to buy stringy bark for us (which we wanted because we like the look of it and it's locally grown) so we were furious when we found out he'd gone for 'Standard Grade'. His view was that we didn't really know what we wanted and that he didn't want to work with Feature Grade wood because he didn't want to fill all the holes! He simply couldn't comprehend that we didn't want him to fill the damned things, we wanted a floor with lumps and bumps in it!
This is the resulting flooring (complete with pencil marks), and it's OK. It is less bland than Premium Grade timber would have been, but also less lovely than Feature Grade... Our next battle is set to be about what treatment to put on it! The contractor likes polyurethane and we have specified a natural oil. His response was "I'll use OIL-BASED polyurethane", so as you can see, we have a problem - but I have told Warren that if the wrong product is used it will be sanded off at his own cost and the correct treatment will be applied!
This is a view towards the front door (which will also be oil-finished, just so you know!), with the planter in the foreground, having just been core-filled prior to being rendered.
A bath with a view!
Saturday, December 19, 2009
ding dong merrily on high
We're getting there!
We went up to the block yesterday to get a run-through of the solar electricity system, which is now connected and fully functional! AND... Michael signed off on the Biolytix sewage system as well. Apparently we have to "innoculate" the system for a couple of weeks before the installers come back with the worms and microbes, which is a posh way of saying that we need to use the toilet properly for a while to give them some food! Darling daughter had the honour of being the first innoculator (although I don't suppose in years to come she'll thank me for announcing that!). I had a moment of panic when there didn't seem to be any water in the toilet, but of course it was the first time it had been used and water had to travel along the pipes from the tank. Phew.
The above photo is of what will be my studio, complete with dearest husband standing in front of the new sink unit (very nice). My printing bench will be next to it shortly, serving as a temporary storage/food prep area until we move into the main house.
Now that we have a working solar system we also have ceiling fans and lights! The recessed lights are 21W LED lights that look a lot like halogen down lights but aren't... much more energy efficient and 'green', and 3 times the price, but never mind. Because of the relatively high ceilings we're not expecting them to light up the place in a dazzling sort of way, and in any case we prefer task-oriented lighting so I have 2 vertical fluorescent tubes above my printing bench and plenty of plugs for lamps, which I will have to convert to using LED bulbs.
This shows the small bathroom in its glory. We've chosen amazingly cheap dark grey floor tiles and flat white matte wall tiles. The vanity unit was cheap(ish) but smart (drawer unit is on the floor in the front of the first photo), and the fittings were on sale, as were all the ceiling fans! The ceiling fans are all reversible so that we can draw down warm air from the ceilings in the winter, and they were reduced in price by over $100 so we bought all 10 that we need for the house, thereby saving ourselves over a $1,000 dollars!
The savings in the ceiling fans and the floor tiles will - hopefully - accommodate the extra we're going to be spending in some other areas such as wine storage. We went up the other day to meet someone about the cool room, and he turned out to be a brilliant source of pragmatic advice and creative ideas. Now we don't need a huge cool room and were planning to place it diagonally in a square space so that we could fill the rest with wine storage, but our friendly refrigeration specialist (I'll call him Martin but I'm embarrassed to say I can't remember his name. Oops!) suggested making the cool room square, to fill the space, because it will reduce costs and maximise materials by avoiding cutting into the standard-sized sheets of wall/insulation that they use. However, he's shown us a way of using one side of the cool room as a partitioned wine cellar and - here's the fun part! - cutting access into the front of it i.e. from the dining room side of the wall, with snazzy glass doors so that it looks like a swanky commercial wine storage display. Wow! What a great idea, and I could see darling husband's eyes light up at the thought. Additionally, darling husband came up with the equally jazzy idea of using a coiled copper pipe running vertically through the cool room from the exterior water tanks to cool the water on the way through and dispensing it via a dedicated 'drinking water tap' on the pantry side of the wall, above the sink, and thus making great use of the available refrigeration to get cool drinking water and obviating the need for a fancy zip tap.
The only downer is that the kitchen people who gingerly made their way up the muddy track (we'd had a LOT of rain again) to the house still can't see what I'm getting at about the central kitchen storage/island units and so I still don't have anyone lined up to build them, and that could be a bit of a problem.
We went up to the block yesterday to get a run-through of the solar electricity system, which is now connected and fully functional! AND... Michael signed off on the Biolytix sewage system as well. Apparently we have to "innoculate" the system for a couple of weeks before the installers come back with the worms and microbes, which is a posh way of saying that we need to use the toilet properly for a while to give them some food! Darling daughter had the honour of being the first innoculator (although I don't suppose in years to come she'll thank me for announcing that!). I had a moment of panic when there didn't seem to be any water in the toilet, but of course it was the first time it had been used and water had to travel along the pipes from the tank. Phew.
The above photo is of what will be my studio, complete with dearest husband standing in front of the new sink unit (very nice). My printing bench will be next to it shortly, serving as a temporary storage/food prep area until we move into the main house.
Now that we have a working solar system we also have ceiling fans and lights! The recessed lights are 21W LED lights that look a lot like halogen down lights but aren't... much more energy efficient and 'green', and 3 times the price, but never mind. Because of the relatively high ceilings we're not expecting them to light up the place in a dazzling sort of way, and in any case we prefer task-oriented lighting so I have 2 vertical fluorescent tubes above my printing bench and plenty of plugs for lamps, which I will have to convert to using LED bulbs.
This shows the small bathroom in its glory. We've chosen amazingly cheap dark grey floor tiles and flat white matte wall tiles. The vanity unit was cheap(ish) but smart (drawer unit is on the floor in the front of the first photo), and the fittings were on sale, as were all the ceiling fans! The ceiling fans are all reversible so that we can draw down warm air from the ceilings in the winter, and they were reduced in price by over $100 so we bought all 10 that we need for the house, thereby saving ourselves over a $1,000 dollars!
The savings in the ceiling fans and the floor tiles will - hopefully - accommodate the extra we're going to be spending in some other areas such as wine storage. We went up the other day to meet someone about the cool room, and he turned out to be a brilliant source of pragmatic advice and creative ideas. Now we don't need a huge cool room and were planning to place it diagonally in a square space so that we could fill the rest with wine storage, but our friendly refrigeration specialist (I'll call him Martin but I'm embarrassed to say I can't remember his name. Oops!) suggested making the cool room square, to fill the space, because it will reduce costs and maximise materials by avoiding cutting into the standard-sized sheets of wall/insulation that they use. However, he's shown us a way of using one side of the cool room as a partitioned wine cellar and - here's the fun part! - cutting access into the front of it i.e. from the dining room side of the wall, with snazzy glass doors so that it looks like a swanky commercial wine storage display. Wow! What a great idea, and I could see darling husband's eyes light up at the thought. Additionally, darling husband came up with the equally jazzy idea of using a coiled copper pipe running vertically through the cool room from the exterior water tanks to cool the water on the way through and dispensing it via a dedicated 'drinking water tap' on the pantry side of the wall, above the sink, and thus making great use of the available refrigeration to get cool drinking water and obviating the need for a fancy zip tap.
The only downer is that the kitchen people who gingerly made their way up the muddy track (we'd had a LOT of rain again) to the house still can't see what I'm getting at about the central kitchen storage/island units and so I still don't have anyone lined up to build them, and that could be a bit of a problem.
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