LIFE IN THE TIME OF CORONAVIRUS PART ELEVEN
SUNDAY 24 MAY 2020 0900HRS BST

Completely putting aside the virus, the Chinese attempt to end Hong Kong autonomy, and the growing furore over Dominic Cummings' supposed repeated 'breaking the lockdown rules he helped write' (should be so simple to prove-disprove if the man drove his family 250+miles to sightsee bluebells in the wood by checking the traffic cams, d'uh!). I need a break from it all. I've checked the dailies and am now going to waffle on about something 'closer to home' - reorganising my kitchen (again).

I've been searching the Internet for ideas - what a laugh when the best home reno sites promise to help the reader/viewer make a 'compact/tiny/small' kitchen work better and then the page opens to show a 15x20sq-ft kitchen claiming it as a tiny space in desperate need of extension rather than simple 'keep the footprint and make it work'. £50K later the homeowner has a bigger kitchen fit for 'entertaining the neighbourhood'. meh

My kitchen is 8x8. Feet, not square feet. Barring a lottery win (which one must play to have a chance at winning), there will be no extension (no-where to extend to, actually) and there will be no renovation (but a girl can dream - starting with moving the clothes washer to the bathroom and oh dear, I'd really need a big lottery win as that would mean re-wiring not only the kitchen but the bathroom and would also mean going from a bathroom to a shower room...).

After 18 months of living with the existing kitchen I know two things (after the realisation a real renovation is of course waaaaaaaaaaay out of my budget). One - my kitchen doesn't work the way it is. Two, getting it to work is going to take a whole lot of elbow grease (see below re painting).

I have no room in the kitchen for tools and equipment AND actual food. Problem solved - I bought a reasonably priced pine bookcase (tall) and re-jigged the living room furniture to permit placement of said bookcase just the other side of the kitchen wall (for easier access). Into that bookcase went the food. A door will eventually follow - perhaps. The now I have a tension rod and fabric curtain panel hiding the food from casual view. It looks quite 'Scottish Farmhouse' and I have enough fabric left to make new living room curtains and recover the ottoman.

And the kitchen tools and equipment are now happily in the cupboards, easy(ish) to get to without having to move this to get to that. Worktop now uncluttered (good thing as there isn't much worktop to clutter in the first place).

I want to replace the 1950s style fluorescent tube light fixture with flexible track lighting. Paul isn't keen. I don't care. Luckily it's a job I can do myself - if Paul doesn't decide an electrician must be called in and that's too expensive so replacing that horrible light fixture is out of the question. heh 

But more importantly, DAMN I loathe the cupboard doors! Ugly doesn't begin to describe the horror. They weren't cheap to fit - nothing cheap lasts 30 years and those have. But oh wow are they ugly and completely the wrong colouring to match that kitchen - faint brown veining on beige plus a cheap looking faux wood 'trim' at the top of each door and drawer front - ICK! Worse, the doors are melamine on press-wood so there's no painting them successfully to ensure 'easy clean-up'. dammit. Off I went to the 'Net and sadly quickly discovered replacing those doors with something I could paint (and then clean) was far-far-far over the budget. It might be less expensive to completely replace the cupboards altogether, that's how expensive replacement doors would have been.

So now I'm scouring the Internet for reasonably priced self-adhesive vinyl wrap to cover the horror and make that kitchen look more pulled together. Paul is sceptical - he understands wallpaper and self-adhesive surface cover and he knows that is going to be a nightmare job getting the wrap done right. heh. I'm way ahead of him - I'm looking at something with faint but distinct grey lines (bonus - matches the floor and worktop) so piecing in would be slightly easier and hide most 'mistakes'.

And new handles. OH MY WORD those are bloody expensive! So much so I'm considering trying one long copper pipe cut into handles, capped (so the cut ends don't shred hands) and an extension soldered on to make screwing the hand-crafted handles to the doors. We'll see. I envisioned lovely old fashioned cup handles, not copper (that will have to be coated or polished, eew, more work!) hand-crafted handles that will protrude a wee bit enough to catch clothing.

Paint. I have a gallon of primrose that will be going on what little visible wall there is in there. Right now it's a goldish beigey cream coffee-cup motif cushion vinyl wallpaper - an attempt to match up with the horrid cupboards? Who cares, I don't like it and want it gone. That's going to be an interesting job, getting 30 year old wallpaper off the wall, 'mudding'/plastering to make a smooth painting surface - but I relish the work I'm good at. Once it's done, even with the 'legacy tiles' (legacy meaning it's what was here when we bought the house), once the paint is done, that kitchen will be MINE.  

The 'legacy tiles' on the splashback. I actually quite like them and am trying to incorporate the beige-blue-poppy red colouring into the kitchen design (hahahahaha - my worktop is faux black and gold-flecked granite, my floor is faux ceramic black-grey veined vinyl). But if I can't work out a way to keep those tiles, I've discovered a work-around - peel and stick vinyl 'tiles' that cover the original tiles but not the grout. There are some really nice designs that would completely (once the cupboard doors are dealt with) change the look and feel in there. Would the 'fix' be scrubbable - dunno and am still trying to find reviews that tell me yes/no.

The truth is I'm not keen on tile - one of my Saturday morning chores as a teen was cleaning the grout on the kitchen walls and worktop and trust me, cleaning 50 year old grout is not fun or easy. I think it safe to say I hate tile. My preference is painted walls (and silicone seal at the base to keep splashes out of the wall) covered by a clean piece of glass. Don't laugh and don't roll your eyes in disdain - if you can afford to re-tile and if you have the energy and ability to contort yourself into back-wrenching positions to clean the tiles, good on yer. I can't afford to re-tile every five-ten years and I am in my mid-60s, I don't bend well any longer! One day, hopefully sooner rather than too much later, those tiles are coming down and paint+glass going up.

Sad to say this is not my dream kitchen even if I manage to work-around those tiles and get my cupboard doors re-covered. It's not the size, it's the way the appliances currently fit in there (and where). And it's the cupboards that should go to the ceiling but don't, leaving a a completely useless ten inch gap at the top.

If I played the lottery and won, I'd have to first have the kitchen and bathroom re-wired to accommodate the appliance reshuffle (including an industrial strength exhaust fan in the bathroom and fitting a tumble dryer over the washer).

In the kitchen, I'd leave the plumbing footprint. I'd move the clothes washer into the bathroom (which would become a shower room to make room for the washer and make getting a shower safer as well - oh my goodness why on earth are British bathtubs so bloody high-sided?!) and put a dishwasher in where the clothes washer is now. I'd put a single wall oven above the dishwasher. Directly across from those appliances, I'd fit an industrial strength exhaust fan through the wall, fit a ceramic hob cook-top with pots-pans storage below. Between those two walls I'd pull the current window and replace it with a 'greenhouse' window - not a deep one but a mere 12 inches would be enough to really make that kitchen feel bigger.

I'd replace all the cupboards with ones that usefully go to the ceiling leaving room where the current hob and oven are now for a frost-free American style side-by-side fridge-freezer. The lower cupboards would all be pull-out and the upper would be pull-down - I'm too old to be climbing on a step-ladder and bending into a bottom cupboard. And I'd replace the worktops with faux butcher block. I'd have a double bowl sink with a pull-out sprayer-tap.

Bathroom? Out-out-out with that 1960s bathtub with sides so high it's a struggle to climb in to get a shower! Compact water-saving toilet, compact hand-wash basin and vanity OR a pedestal one with a full-sized basin - the only things I keep in the vanity cupboard now are cleaning supplies and those could go in the household supply cupboard to be hand carried into the shower room. (I keep shampoo, towels, etc, in a linen cupboard outside the bathroom) Stacking clothes washer and tumble dryer vented to the outside. Efficient. functional. Brilliant.

But. But I'd keep the legacy tiling in there despite my not being keen on tile. It's pink-light grey and kitsch and I love it. I want to paint the un-tiled walls a very light grey to pick up the light grey in the tiling. I have reproduction vintage rosebud on cream curtains (over slat blinds - I'm not stupid, lol, and that window is to the front of the house), a mauve bath mat, and use mauve, purple, pink, and green (solids) towels. Aside from the weird painted over cushion vinyl wallpaper (creamy beige, really? In a pink bathroom, really?!) and miserably high tub, the bathroom is rather nice. Luckily Paul doesn't care what colour scheme is in there as long as the toilet flushes and the taps work reliably.

Sunday dreaming - Life in the Time of Coronavirus.