Kitchen capers

        Picture from here.  Artistic embellishment by moi

The building, re-wiring, decorating etc at Discombobulated Towers is finally finished.  Sis no 1 and her cat, Tuppence (the ginger ninja) can breathe a sigh of relief as I, the other-half and the three-legged monster cat have returned home after a prolonged (and much appreciated) stay at her house.

Stupidly we didn’t take any pictures of the old kitchen before work started but take it from me it was a dark, dank dungeon of a place.  But now?  Ta dah!

Cooker is cream, washer machine is white - Argh!

Flowers from the builder (probably included in his bill)

And, just for my mate M, look our co-produced artwork once again has pride of place (don’t worry I won’t tell anyone about how you bullied me into creating this masterpiece).

Please don't go thinking this refurb was a painless experience.  It took twice as long (or more) than we expected, went over budget and involved a dust up with a 'kitchen fitter' who could no more fit a kitchen than I could crochet a teapot. 

I always used to sneer, as I watched Grand Designs, at people who almost always spent loads more than they intended on their dream homes, took months and months longer than expected to complete building and ended up close to a nervous breakdown.  Now bitter experience has taught me better and I will watch the programme wearing my humble trousers in future.

However, all the trauma is behind us now and I can bask in the fantastic-ness of the new kitchen - it's not for cooking in you understand, just for looking at.  

Our small garden has taken a pounding.  It was used by the builders for storage space.  So while it used to look like this:

It now looks like this:

Which means that when Cyril went out for the first time since our return he couldn't resist rolling around in the sandy red grot and ended up looking like this:

I should at this point mention that I've also got new sofas.  One is cream coloured.  I sense a difficult evening ahead.

Normal non-refurb whinging will be resumed tomorrow when I start on chemo again - the drug trial TDM1.  Please keep everything crossed that this is the chemo that zaps the buggers!