I hate our kitchen. I mean really hate it, over the last 3 years it has become the dumping ground for many, many projects and furniture that was waiting to be sold. In a house the size of this one that is crazy, we pretty much need every square inch. 

A few years back we brough some 1950s English Rose kitchen units, they are beauiful but sadly need a hell of a lot of work and what with more pressing projects this one has got put off again and again, so this spring I decided I couldn't take it, we had to make the kitchen at least usable. This mean ripping the current wall units out and revamping the base units to make them nicer.
It also mean finally painting over the awful magnolia paint on the walls, horray! We always assumed the plaster in this room was crap judging but how bumpy the paint was but we actually found it was meanly layers and layers of paint which a few weeks ago I started chipping off.

Then lots of fillers where the plaster had chipped, then I could begin painting!

The colour change made a huge difference, as with the rest of the house the white just bounces more light around making this quite a sunny room. 

As storage is at a premium in here we realised we would in fact need some sort of wall unit just to house bowls, glasses and mugs, however the old melamine one was too big and oppressive so was donated it to a neighbour for his workshop. I managed to find on eBay a 60s glass fronted wall unit for around £12, this had spend a few weeks sitting around getting in the way but Rich finally got it fitted on Sunday!

I love this, it goes so well in this room, the glass also helps to bounce much needed light into the space and the slightly sloped front doesn't make it feel like it intrudes into the space to much.

We had a game fitting it, these things really aren't meant to be taken on and off walls to much and the old brackets for it where missing so Rich had to make new one (which still need painting!). This is the only slight issue with working with older furniture, especially fitting stuff, mostly it really doesn't want to cooperate and you end up cursing your decision and vowing to buy a kitchen from B&Q next time! It was worth it in the end as we are really happy with how it looks and a bargain at around £15 with the new wooden brackets.

The next thing was to replace the counter tops, the ones here are ok but just really bland colour which I loathe! We nipped up to Ikea in Bristol last week just to take a look after failing to find anything on eBay or Gumtree, we spent ages in the kitchen department deliberating and agonising over the costs! It been a while since I did a kitchen but bloody hell their expensive and just for counter tops! In the end we decided to sleep on it as it was also 10 mins till closing time at this point, on the way out we spotted Bargain Corner and nipped in where we found two solid oak 3meter works tops both at 58% discount!

They have slight scratching and some dents where they been dropped all of which we should be able to work around with no problems.

These we are super chuffed with, they should have be £120 each but where down to £50! We will have to wait a little longer to fit these are Rich has a job on this week, he's also still having to go careful with his arm so lifting them is a bit hard work, but hopefully in a few week we should be able to fit them. We will swap out the doors on the base units saving the frames which will save us a lot, the whole thing is on a tight budget as we do intend to eventually it the English Rose units but this takes the pressure off that project for a while and means I wont go insane in the mean time!

Wow, all this just so I can display my mid century china better!!

As part of revamping the old derelict greenhouse base ready for the new shed we needed a load of bricks, we'd shopped around online and as usual where horrified at the prices that nice old red bricks go for so as usually happens when we cant afford something I turned to good old Bath Freegle.
A really nice family over the other side of the city very very kindly gave us over 300 red edwardian bricks totally for free! So we spent most of sunday collecting them, out poor little Rav would only carry about 70 at a time so it did take a while.

This should be more than enough for the shed base with enough over the build a raised bed or two. 

We also needed to be able to level the top of the exsiting base, we had through we could just do that with concrete but again we would have needed tons which was out of our budget, luckily I managed to find a lovely couple giving away 2" thick ex-council pavers which we can level up with sand. 
Bloody hell these where heavy! We managed to get 14 of them which should be enough.

Rich has made a start on the foundations, his new healed arm is giving him some problems so he's having to pace himself a bit (which he's not very good at, once he starts a job he likes to blitz it!).

Consequentially the garden now looks like a builders yard!

Im still looking at sheds, now we are building the bricks round the existing base it will make it slightly large 8 x 8 square which gives us more choice in sheds, I currently have my eye on this one...

Of course now we are looking at spending money on this, our car has decided it might actually quite like a new clutch and one or two other bits while its at it! Anyone fancy trading design work for car parts or sheds?

So we've been shed shopping online, we've needed a proper shed for ages but what with one thing and another keep putting it off. But now we need to urgently sort the old leaking, rotting garage roof out (preferable before it collapses) so the ideas is to build a shed to house the usually garage paraphernalia while we reroof it.
Once the garage is water tight and we can move all the stuff back in we can convert the shed into a mini print studio for me! This does however make shed shopping a bit difficult as Rich is looking for a quick and easy shed to build and Im looking for something nice and pretty to work in!
The concences at the moment is a potting shed with large windows down one side to let in light when I need to work in there but should still be big enough to house a lawnmower and all our other junk.

Thoughts on a postcard shed fans!

As I have mentioned before our garden is on a slope which would mean creating a terrace but luckily we have an old greenhouse base which had long lost its greenhouse when we moved in, the concrete base has sat neglected for ages while we tried to decided what to do with it. So in the spirit of recycling and trying to keep within a budget Rich has taken on revamping the old base but adding a facing wall of old red bricks to cover the industrial looking concreate.

We are slightly hampered by not currently having enough bricks which we have been trying to source locally for free or really cheap!

We did manage to get some large ex council pavers to cover the base free of gumtree which was a bonuse. Work will progress slowly on this and Rich still doesn't have the full use of his now healed broken arm back and is also trying to fit it in between art jobs! Fingers crossed this nice weather holds out!!

This will at least give me plenty of time to dream shed shop!

The rest of the garden is looking a little wild and slightly frazzeled in the sun, a lot of my early flowers have gone over and I'm letting them set seeds for next year.

What has been noticeable the last few weeks is the massive number of bees and butterflies around, I have been tying to plant more and more things I know they like my favourite of course being Lavender.

All this hard work by the bees has resulted in the first fruit from our espaliered apple trees.

Hopefully this time next year I will be out working in my little print studio watching all the bees and butterflies close up!