My New Kitchen....almost !!!

The kitchen reno has slowed, through no fault of ours, but it is progressing....
Our builder  and hubby  began the process of lining the  kitchen walls which took a couple of days,

Hubby had  purchased a sheet lifter to aide  in  putting up the ceiling sheets  and it certainly made a huge difference, he and the builder were easily able to do the ceiling by themselves .

Once the ceiling was in  our neighbour, friend, electrician came back and installed all the lighting and power points into the  sheeting and hubby got busy with plastering the joins.

Then the kitchen installation day finally arrived, the  carcasses  were being done in Dubbo( a bit over an hour away, but the doors were a special  style I ordered and  were not made locally so had to order them)

So this is where we are at now,  unfortunately the doors have been delayed  and won't be  here and installed until at least the 17th of December. But it is reasonably functional for the time being.
We have purchased a new gas stove and a new dishwasher, but these also won't be installed until after the tiling is done, but the tiler was due to start yesterday but was a no show due to car issues.

So these are sitting out on the verandah just waiting to be installed.
During the  kitchen progress I have had a few injuries that slowed me down a bit, firstly I dropped the big heavy crow bar that I was levering rocks out of a garden edging with,

It was very swollen and painful.
Then a few days later whilst helping load  demolition rubbish onto the utility, I banged my shin not one but stupidly three (3) times on the tow bar of the ute.

And finally, while heading up to the chook yard to collect eggs one day soon after,  slipped over  in a chook  dust hole and   rolled my ankle badly, not broken just sprained. All my injuries have now healed, although the ankle is a little weak, but I will take care not to injure it again.

We  are finally starting to use  the house like normal, won't be much longer now and  life will return to our usual  routine, which will be lovely.
We have just had all our children and grandchildren home for a few days and   it felt good.

We put up a shade shelter and a paddeling pool and  escaped the heat as best we could. It will be wonderful when we  finally are able to erect a covered area out this side of the house.
We have had a wonderful glut of apricots on our old tree this year, I picked a total of 11 buckets of fruit from it and made up 3 batches of jam as well as 4  canner loads of preserved  apricots for the pantry.

The pantry is a mess, as I have been just shoving things in there whenever I need to clear spaces, but I organized this a bit to put all the apricot preserving away.
The vegie garden is progressing well, hubby has been struggling with the water, spending ages moving hoses and trying to keep it all  growing,

The first planting nearly ready to harvest and process and the second planting close behind.

We also had our first and only cherry off our newly planted trees, hubby very generously gave it to me, it was delicious.

It's been a huge month or so since I last posted, and I must endeavour to update more often, but time just gets away and always something needing to be done, But I promise I will try. :-)  :-)
So, until we meet again further down the track of life,
Take care,
Cheers.
Jane.

Kitchen chaos !!!

This merry go round of renovations never seems to slow down to let people off. We  have surged forward and  everything seems to be finally falling into place with just a few hiccups along the way to mess with our minds.
This has been a physical ,mental and emotionally draining period, but I know the end is in sight now.

After the chimney was demolished,  hubby started ripping out the internal linings of the walls , then  the  builder returned promptly and began framing up to put in our new back door.

 Once the new door was installed, the  existing small window that let in minimal light was removed to make way for a much bigger aluminium slider.

They then  replaced the  hardiplanks  and brought it back up to lock up stage. I often have to stop and remember  that our builder is now  80 years of age, I think he  really does a remarkable job for his years, we think he is amazing.

We then got busy , covered the doorways with drop

sheets  and removed all the  old smelly insulation from the ceiling , we found mouse poo, a rat nest, and spiders... they seem to be popping up everywhere. It was a filthy job  but didn't take too long and we cleaned up quickly afterwards.

Our  neighbour( and our electrician ) then helped pull out the last of the remaining cupboards, and sink unit and helped hubby with re- routing the gas and water pipes that  ran outside the old chimney and into the  sink  cupboards.

And then we began using the camp kitchen.  All good as I know it is only for a few weeks.

The next step was  to lift the old vinyl floor covering, only to our dismay it was firmly glued to the floor with massive amounts of adheisive.  I pulled with all my strength while Brian drove a spade under it to seperate the vinyl from the floor.
We had hoped to re use the vinyl but it was possible.

It is hard to imagine  that all this mess, came from my kitchen( and that's not including the chimney bricks.)

We  borrowed a friends truck and went to Dubbo to pick up the new lining sheets and the  two new bookcases that I ordered . I had sorted out all my precious coloured glass and   good china and was able to sort it out and display it finally.  We also saw the kitchen installers, and they have done a measure and quote and will install my hopefully beautiful new kitchen on November 16th, I can hardly wait.
Below is the design layout.

While all this was happening, we also in our wisdom with the neighbours decided to kill a beast, it was one of those things we should of not done, as everything went wrong that could go wrong, and as luck would have it , our coolroom chucked a wobbly and  stopped working and we had to rush the beast to another friend who also  had a coolroom. He is a wonderful friend who also offered to cut it up for us.

We are so very grateful for all their help., as we would have been  in such a mess without them.
We hatched another lot of chickens out, 11 this time, and we have just moved them from the brooder to a new outside coop that we have just been generously given by our neice. The first batch of chickens are growing fast and will soon be leaving us ( well the hens will be).

The turkeys also managed to hatch out 5 baby poults but we lost two of them that were very tiny. but the other three seem to be doing well and  the two hens are both looking after them.

Our broad beans  reached maturity and we picked, podded and froze them for future use.

We are getting a few flowers around the garden, the Jacobean lillies are beginning to flower,  I just love that splash of red from them and a few geraniums around the garden.

Mine and my sister in laws( pictured) rain cactus is out in full bloom, this flowering always indicates that rain is on it's way in a few days.

What I call my butterfly tree( but really is an orchid tree I think) has began to flower, last year it only had one bloom, but is covered in blooms this year, I really love it, it is  very spectacular  when a larger tree in full flower.

And lastly, but certainly by no means least, My Mum celebrated her 91 st birthday last week.
I travelled over and enjoyed a lovely lunch with  Mum, my brother and sister in law and my neice, at my brother's home.

I took this photo of my lovely  Mum, I think she looks really well and is keeping in reasonable health for her age. I hope she is around to celebrate many more birthdays with us in the future.
There is much to do, and I apologize that this is a long drawn out  post, but  our life is a bit crazy at the moment, and I expect that is reflected here,
Take care until we meet up again,
Cheers,
Jane.