KITCHEN REMODEL - BEFORE PHOTOS

This whole kitchen remodelling thing technically started months ago, when I spontaneously bought a fridge in the Christmas sales. It seemed like a good idea at the time. But then the gravity of a kitchen remodel dawned on me. Somewhat in denial, the monster of a fridge ended up sitting in our entry for months, like a giant metallic elephant in the room. Fridge? What fridge? Oh, that old thing... But then a couple of weeks ago, Graeme and I finally ordered our new kitchen and today we started taking down a couple of the cupboards. So now it's official and the remodelling process has begun for real! Eeeek! And on that note, I figured I’d share a couple of before-photos!

The kitchen hasn’t been changed much since being built, except for back when I was born and my parents added an extension to the house, expanding the kitchen and adding a balcony and another bedroom below. Since then it’s been painted cream, re-wallpapered a couples of times, and last year I (…aka Graeme) changed all the handles. It’s got a great size and gets tons of light, and it’s also got a pretty sweet view and opens up to a balcony overlooking the valley. I love having breakfast there in the morning as the sun rises behind the mountains.

More or less everything in the kitchen is going and will be replaced. There's still a couple of things we're still figuring out, like flooring and what we're doing with the extractor fan. The fan is connected to a motor in the attic which also connects to both the upstairs and downstairs bathroom, which meant that we weren't able to get it from IKEA along with the rest of our kitchen. Yep, if you're ever at mine and want to take a shower, you'll need to go into the kitchen to turn the fan on first. If anyone has any experience with this, suggestions are welcome!

WORK IN PROGRESS: PICKLES' PUFF MAMA!

I am awesome at starting new projects. Not always so great at finishing them, but great at starting. The latest project I've started is this pouf from Pickles, the Puff Mama! I love the look of knitted poufs, and I've previously knitted the Puff Daddy twice for our old flat in Glasgow, once in blue and once in white. Both times I chose yarn that didn't hold up very well, and as Bo claimed the poufs as her new beds they ended up looking quite ratty and lost their shape. There was also that time when I was making this rug, and I managed to squirt black paint all over the white pouf. So it goes when you're DIY-ing it up in a tiny flat!

This time though, I'm using t-shirt yarn. I found this great t-shirt yarn from Krea Line, which seams way more durable. And it's super soft too (which makes me want to crochet a rug out of it, perhaps similar to this one I made out of an old bed sheet, eons ago?)! I appear to have miscalculated the amount I need though, so I'm toying with the idea of doing half of the pouf in a different color. A dark, contrasting charcoal grey, perhaps?

DIY PRINTED BANNER

I don't usually blog much about work and I don't plan on starting, but I recently got the news that I would be offered a redundancy package. Being the least experienced and newest in the department, it wasn’t exactly a massive shock to me as they had announced that redundancies would be made earlier in the year, but regardless—that kind of news are never any fun. Either way, I’m pretty optimistic about the whole situation and new opportunities that will ultimately arise from this, and I’m confident that I’ll find a new job soon. And in the meantime, it’s just a little extra time to enjoy the summer, work on some projects around the house, and organize our wedding in August, right?

So with that in mind, I figured I’d make myself a printed banner with some wise words of wisdom printed on them. I've seen tons of these around the web, and I love how cute and simple they are. And the phrase is of course a reference to Douglas Adams' Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, which I think might be one of my favorite books. I made the image using the font Langdon, and I used this technique to print the image onto fabric. I don't have the best printer in the world, but i quite liked the worn effect I got here. I then hemmed the sides and used a large, wooden BBQ skewer to mount it on, and ta-da! I haven't quite decided if this will be going in our studio downstairs, or if it will be going next to our dog Bo's bed, as it looks pretty cute there and she's very nervous and panics about most things.

On a completely different note, today Graeme and I spent 4 hours in IKEA, waiting to order our kitchen. We usually try our best to avoid IKEA on a Saturday in the first place, but it was the last day of their special kitchen deal so all we could do was to suck it up with all the other kitchen buyers. More on this later!