Countdown to kitchen...

We've been here a year now. That would have passed me by completely had it not been for the spam phone calls from the house insurance companies. We still don't have a kitchen. Well, actually that's a lie. We actually do have a kitchen now. Installation is schedueled - soon. I might soon be able to bake things, make things and even find things. We might not have to eat in the lounge any more. And we might not have to wash up in the bath for much longer either. Happiness in a box (well, in 62 boxes and two bags of hinges) from IKEA :) Exited? Yep, just a little bit :)

Old hands

I produced this one a couple of years ago for my college tutor; I found it again yesterday when I was tidying up my computer desktop. At the time, he was updating his book about the college and was having problems with an old print so I decided to have a shot at redrawing the scene. A reproduction wasn't needed in the end because one of our more tech-savvy members managed to manipulate the original image so it could be used but here is my effort.



I can't find the original drawing sadly to reference it, but it is a picture of St Cross church, Holywell, Oxford. It now houses Balliol college's historic collection.

A little craft in the carp

I can't make things, bake things or - to be honest do any of the things I normally like doing at the moment what with the house in such a state.

But I can draw.

This is where I work. Top floor, about half way along the building, behind the tree.

The elephant in the room

Every home should have one.

Chuck out your chintz...

Wanna see my kitchen?



Yeah. Great. *sigh* The other side's not much better...



Unfortunately before we can have a kitchen fitted, we need to do a lot of prep in here, the ceiling needs repairing, the walls need treating, the floor needs removing, the units need to go, the hob needs to be dumped, the extractor fan needs to be removed...

All in all we need a skip... probably several.

It doesn't help that all of the stuff we haven't unpacked lives in here for the time being, so in order to make things easier, I have been decluttering, freecycling and getting rid of stuff. I have a ruthless streak when it comes to stuff, if it isn't nailed down, it will go in the skip/on ebay or on freecycle. Getting Holger to chuck stuff out however is like trying to get a stool sample from a rocking horse. Together we work out fine; I stop him being buried by the stuff in the avalanche cupboard, he stops me throwing away my passport.

Only he's in Frankfurt at the moment... This mess is mine... Mwahhhaaaaa....

New Year, new loo

I haven't been about much for the past couple of months. I'd like to say it is because the house is progressing super fast and I'm coming in full of energy and tackling the mess superhero style.

Nope, I've been snowed under at work. Again.

But the bathroom looks like this now. Which is awesome.



It's taken far longer than we thought. The shower quad was the sticking point here. We ordered a 900mm quad from the bathroom arm of a major supermarket, checked it when it arrived - everything seemed to be fine. Cemented the tray down. All good so far... Until we try to assemble the blasted thing. Five different people tried, multiple attempts. No way was that going to slot in so it was banished to the work in progress pit for ages out of sheer frustration. The screw holes for the frame just wouldn't key together.

It was all too much hassle in the end - we gave up and bought one ebay to replace the one we ordered which I dumped on freecycle last night. Ironically it's a much better quality quadrant we've ended up with and it cost much less.



All good, all the hard stuff done...

Well, until we broke the one orginal feature.



Never ends, does it?

Viennese whirlwinds

I don't often talk about travel really, other than posting photos from time to time; but that's mainly because a lot of the travel that we do revolves around work and noone wants to know what I do during daylight hours.

But this summer's work break took us to Vienna then onto Munich by train; first for a meeting, then for an instrument training. We managed to squeeze a few days actual break between the two, because it wasn't cost effective for us to fly home for three days then fly back out again.



We spent the few days in Salzburg; a place of stunning landscape totally spoilt by marzipan and Mozart.

I found a friendly cactus.



And played with my food. Yep, that was about as exciting as it got. Next year, I'm choosing the conference.