Kitchen Toys

I am looking forward to the day Eliza gets a toy kitchen, mainly I can get her the following items - I have been loving them for more years than I care to disclose.

Honeybake Wooden Mixer Set, Wooden Toaster, Kitchen Scales
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Possibly the stupidest design feature ever

Whoever designed our kitchen hated cooking.

Our kitchen has two drawers. One cutlery type drawer and one big pot drawer that is useless, as if you filled it, it would be too heavy to open.

My cutlery drawer looks like this and it is killing me.

Actually, that is a lie. That is the tidy version.

I really need to be home one day for a cabinet maker to come and fix the issue.
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Kitchen Clean Up

A little while back I went through a declutter phase. I cracked the poos about not being able to fit something into the freezer and it was on like Donkey Kong. The kitchen was my number one enemy and I am pleased to say I won.

 All of our bulk meat went into large containers so I could easily find the mince/chicken/pork/steak.

The bottom drawer, which was overflowing went on a supreme make over. I wish I took a before photo, as it was a disgusting mess.

Sistema should sponsor me, I went through so many containers doing this. It is actually a little different now, I changed a few containers around to make it fit better. The tool box is now a bigger container to fit everything in without a Masters Degree, and the instruction books for the oven and dishwasher are now in the top cupboard as they never get used.

I also attacked the cleaning goods drawer. In its previous life it spaned the drawer and the cupboard under the sink. I threw out many products that we don't use, and condensed the rest. We now have a tub for the shoe cleaning goods, a container for the dishwasher tablets, another container for sponges, steel wool and chux. It all fits rather nicely now.

To finish off my ramage I hung hooks in the rangehood cupboard for the pot holders to hang off, but it turns out that 3M hooks don't stick overly well to our cupboard doors, and they fell down within a day.
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Milk Glass

I do love a glass of chocolate milk, and thought this glass (pictured with lemon soft drink in it) was just too cute to walk past. It is just the right size too.

You can find them from The Little Big Company.

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Tram Rolls

Tram Rolls are pretty popular these days, especially those with famous Melbourne/Sydney suburbs listed.

However, I although I liked them, I wanted one that meant something to me.

I have lived in many of the towns listed, and love that it is made up of regional Victorian towns. Plus it matches the colours in the border tile perfectly!
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You wouldn't read about it...

But our kitchen is finished!

It is not without its faults, but I am trying to look beyond those and focus on the good parts. The bad parts can't be changed, so no point in focusing on it.

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Sunshine on my window. Makes me (un)happy

Hmph, I had a huge post written, but seems Blogger decided to eat it.

As you well know, when we renovated our kitchen we put in a glass sliding door as our back door. Whilst it lets in lots of lovely natural sunlight, it has a bad side - it lets in lots of lovely natural sunlight.

A blind was in order. But what kind of blind was best suited to our needs? It needed to block out light, be reasonably slimline, and match our interior theme of being neutral. I originally planned timber venetians, but they would be terrible impracticable. Mesh roller blinds were within our budget, but didn't block out enough light.

Enter blockout drapes from Freedom

Best part was that we got them on sale post Christmas. The entire job came in at less than $150, the most expensive part being the curtain rod! Another job off the list :D

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Tiles Update

So I have finally made a decision about our kitchen tiles. I have decided on a cream subway tile with a glass mosaic tile in brown tones As you can see with my very dodgy Photoshop mockup, it is very neutral. It actually follows the neutral theme in our kitchen.

We had been putting off doing the splashback as I thought it was going to be rather expensive, even though our tiles are mid-range. By the time we have three rows of cream tiles, we don't actually require that many of the more expensive mosaic tiles. Woohoo!!!

Oh, and the best thing about this job, the husband has suggested that we hire our plasterer who is a tiler as well, to do the job. We are estimating that the job shouldn't cost too much, as it is less than 3 square metres of tiling. Fingers crossed we are right, as neither of us is thrilled with the idea of more tiling.
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More Kitchen Love

Following on from my declaration of love for our kitchen bin, I bring you something else I love in our kitchen.

Our drawers. I always wanted a kitchen full of drawers, and I wish I had chosen to have more installed, however these particular drawers are ever so handy.

In the bottom drawers we have baking bowls and roasting dishes, in the middle we have more baking goods and saucepans on the other side. And at the top we have plates and bowls, and cups and glasses.

Everything is within reach when cooking, and the cups are just below the kettle, which makes it husband proof! Not to mention that we manage to stash more in our drawers than I could in a cupboard, given their is a whole extra 'shelf' happening in there.

Definitely keeping the drawer system in the next house!
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Kitchen Love

Recently we realised that it has been a year since we started the kitchen renovation. Which means we have lived with our new kitchen for almost a year and still not finished it.

It was at this point that I started to list the things I would change about our kitchen in the new house. Some elements of our kitchen would stay, others would go.

On the stay list we have our bin system.

Someone gave us the advise to think about where we would put our bins in our new kitchen. Despite being to super anal organised person I am, I must admit, prior to being given the advise, I hadn't given it little thought. So we looked at our options, having a bin in a cupboard under the sink, a freestanding bin, or a built in devise. We chose the built in kind, and I must say, it is one of my favourite features. 

As you can see, we have two bins, the front for regular waste, the back for recycles. At first I was worried about how small the bins were, given we were going from large bin liners to the bathroom sized ones (which we now re-use plastic shopping bags when we have them), but it hasn't been an issue. If anything, it has made us recycle more and produce less landfill waste. 

The other handy feature about our bin system is the drawer underneath. It is where we keep all of our cleaning items, as it is just the right height for a spray bottle to stand up. I have to say, it is nice not having to dig at the bottom of a cupboard for that rarely used bottle of carpet cleaner, instead just plucking it straight from the drawer.

So there you go, a staying feature of our kitchen was our bin. Can't say I am not unique with that one ;)

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Mixing it up

For a little while I have wanted a Bamix stick. I have a cheapie one, but it never really did what I wanted to. So when it died it wasn't tears I was shedding.

Bamix here I come.

I figure it is an investment. My grandma has had the same one since before I was born, so heres hoping this one lives up the hype!
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A calming space

One thing I love about display homes (oh yes, I am sure you have worked out that I did a massive Display House Tour one weekend - I infact made it around 28 houses in one day...never again!) is that they are designed to be lived in. Designed for the average Joe to say "yes, I can see my stuff in this house". In the majority of them, they are styled with every day items, from regular stores like Target and Adairs. It is one of my hates when glossy magazines show items from stores that aren't readily available. Sure, I get that people pick things up in their travels, but honestly, I hate it when I see the worlds best bookcase, to see it was brought home in a shipping container from Egypt!

This is why I love display homes for inspiration!

Oh, and I love blogs - some of my favourite house pictures are from regular blogs! So keep em coming, if you see something I should know about, email me!!! Pin It

Kitchen Tiles - TICK!

After a week of walking on glued but not grouted tiles, it was starting to wear thin. Even when being careful to lift my feet, I would occassionally stub my toe on an edge. Hence a call was made to my step-dad to come and help with the grouting. Coming home on Friday I was greeted with this beautiful sight:

But, me being me, that wasn't good enough. I needed one last thing to be done by the husband. I needed the kickboards installed. Luckily we had set aside this weekend to do jobs around the house. Saturday we achieved little, mainly due to him being called in to work (convenient much?). But Sunday was the day. He had a choice: kickboards or paint the bathroom and do the skirtings. He chose kickboards.

And the bathroom

For the first time since renovating our bathroom three and a half years ago, we have a secure toilet. See, we never bothered to screw it to the floor. It was meerly held to the floor by the sucky black pipe underneath. EVERYONE who used our loo commented on how it rocks, but it never really bothered us to spend a grand total of $12.35 (screws - $1.30, floor plugs $2.50, drill bit $8.55) on fixing it to the floor. But with tiles in, it has now been secured, and no longer rocks.

So, it is now fair to say that our kitchen is 99% finished. The last two tasks are installing a phone line behind the freezer, and putting the handles on the new rangehood cupboards (which were finally replaced AGAIN, and third time was the charm). The bathroom needs a little bit of work in the coming weeks though.

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More Kitchen Love

Pictures from Metricon Promenade

I do love a good old fashioned American style kitchen! And that dining room, be still my beating heart. (Yes, I am ignoring the practical side of my brain that is screaming "white chairs and children do not mix"

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A Kitchen Update

I am loving that I live in Victoria this weekend, as it is Labour Day weekend, which means 3 days off! Very handy if you want to tile your kitchen and bathroom.

Excuse the mess on the benches, it has been raining and everything had to come inside. And I am yet to clean all the excess gunk from the tiles.

We ran into a few issues along the way. Like our slab being less than level in the bathroom. It is workable, just a bit more fiddly than desired. And then there was the skirtings in the bathroom, which had to be removed, and eventually replaced. Oh, and how could I forget the realisation that our washing machine has been leaking water, and caused some dampness in the wall. Nothing is ever simple in our house!

We still have a few tiles to lay, mainly all the fiddly ones that require lots of cutting (and swearing as we break more tiles), and the grouting to go, but we're hoping it will be done by tomorrow night. Then comes doing all the skirtings. AGAIN!

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Kitchen Tiles - TICK!

I finally made a decision about tiles. Emphasis on the I. The husband wasn't convinced by their darkness, but given his recent complains about the kitchen being too cream, I like the contrast.

Best thing, I ordered them on Saturday morning, and recieved a phone call on Tuesday saying they had arrived. Which means I now need to convince the husband that we need to spend a weekend on our knees for the fun of it :)

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Kitchen Painting - TICK!

The painting almost beat me on the weekend.

ALMOST!

At the start of my painting (actually it was as I was taping the final door frame) I twisted incorrectly and pulled something in my back. The pain was terrible. But I pushed on, and it was worth it when I sit back and look at my newly painted window frames and skirting boards
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Veranda pretty much complete

This weekend gone saw a lot of things happen around our house. We finally put the pots by the back of the house (remind me to buy a new doormat at some point). The far one is a purple calla lilly, the second one is a baby magnolia (i think), and the last one is some mondo grass that just won't die!

We finally put the lights on the back of the house. Which is awesome, as it was quite interesting to feed the dogs at night in the dark!

I am still thinking about a bench seat, and we have plans to put in a cement sheet ceiling. All in good time my friends! All in good time.

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