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Free Counter Ali and Dave's DIY Adventure: August 2007

Sunday, August 19, 2007

Transformation Weekend

The troops were ready for action on Saturday morning to begin the major overhaul of the downstairs of our house. Roger, Jean, Jo and Stuart joined forces with Dave, Freya and myself for a weekend of extreme action and major results.

We began with an almost finished kitchen still resembling a construction site (see before picture below - minus tiling) and an adjacent workshop room filled with tools, shelves and about 2cm of sawdust. Roger and Stuart got to work emptying the workshop room, removing the thoroughly ruined old carpet and laying the conveniently available old carpet from Roger and Jean's living room. Meanwhile, Dave finished the extractor fan ducting and sink waste jobs on the kitchen, while the girls took turns of looking after Freya, attaching 27 handles to the kitchen cupboards and drawers, and peeling the blue film from the doors to reveal the glorious shiny cupboards underneath.



On Sunday the boys got stuck into furniture juggling to turn our upstairs living room into a bedroom, and turn the now liberated workshop room into our living/dining room. We were very relieved that our leather sofa fitted down the staircase as there was substantially less headroom than when we'd lifted it up due to the new loft staircase. Jean and Jo did a fabulous job of cleaning everything and anything while I had a wonderful time in the new kitchen deciding where everything should go and filling the new kitchen cabinets with tins and bottles.

So much was achieved in the weekend, and we effectively gained 2 new rooms to our house! It no longer feels like we live in a flat which is wonderful. There are only minor snagging tasks left to finally finish the kitchen - however this didn't stop us from christening it by shoving some pizzas in our new oven and enjoying a bottle of bubbly to celebrate as we recovered from a very hectic weekend.
Have just realised we've been so busy enjoying our new kitchen we haven't actually taken any photos of it yet! Next post will have lots of kitchen pix, so some baby ones here for now instead..

posted by Ali & Dave @ 9:00 pm 5 comments

The Last Supper

A momentous occasion was marked the Friday before last, when we cooked our last ever meal in our old, dingy upstairs kitchen. To mark the event, I decided on chicken fajitas (can be cooked in about 10 min which is handy when it's already 7pm and we've only just got Freya to bed) and does not require the use of an oven (also handy when yours is broken). Below I can be seen happily frying the chicken content in the knowledge that soon I would be whipping up culinary masterpieces in shiny new surroundings.


The next day the troops were arriving to help transform the downstairs workshop into a functioning lounge/diner while Dave put the finishing touches to the kitchen. This would effectively turn our flat with downstairs building site, into a real life house. All very exciting (as you can see Freya thinks so too....)

posted by Ali & Dave @ 8:44 pm 0 comments