The kitchen arrived last Thursday, our new sofa and armchair on Friday, the bedroom floors should arrive this week, and the shower cubicles are coming next week.
Paola was up at 6 on Thursday to give a final coat of paint to the kitchen ceiling and walls before the kitchen went in. (I was tasked with walking Daisy.) Luckily the paint had dried (enough) when they arrived at 8 and started unpacking everything from their van. The kitchen and garden were soon full of the bits of an unassembled kitchen.
The guys who did the installation were amazing. Real perfectionists. They got all the base units and appliances installed by 1pm. I was a bit worried when he started cutting the worktop to fit the odd shape of the room. But I could see him measuring, marking up the worktop and then checking the measurements again before taking it outside to saw it. It was a perfect fit. Then it was time for lunch so we took them to Serenella’s (of course). Meanwhile, our plumber turned up to get the gas connected and the sink plumbed in.
After lunch the wall cupboards were installed. This was complicated slightly by the fact that the electrician had installed the sockets for the extractor and lighting in the the wrong place. (Actually, he hadn’t provided a socket for the lights at all. So I had to rush round to the hardware shop and sort that out before they installed all the cupboards.)
Finally, they went round and made sure all the doors and drawers were perfectly aligned, checked all the appliances worked and cleared up all their equipment and rubbish. They finally got away just before 8pm. Quite a long day.
We were exhausted just watching all this work so, to celebrate our new kitchen, we went out to eat at Copetta’s!
On Friday, we started unpacking our stuff and trying to work out where things should go (we have a lot less space here than our old kitchen in Bristol, so it is quite a challenge). We spent a long time looking at the kitchen, not really believing it was real. It looked exactly like the computer generated images we had seen in the showroom. We cooked our first meal: a lunch of eggs, bacon pancetta and beans fried courgette flowers. Delicious! We had to eat it sitting on the floor though, as we haven’t unpacked any furniture yet. We are trying to decide on a kitchen table. We have bought a lovely marble table from an English couple who are moving back to the UK but we are thinking that it might be a little bit big for the kitchen. It looks like it will be a perfect fit in the garden though. But that means we have to find another table for the kitchen. We have seen one we like, but it is quite expensive. (Even more expensive since the Tories decided to trash the value of the pound.)
They guys arrived with our new sofa on Friday. They took one look at our staircase and said there was no way it would go up that way, even without any banisters. So, the only route was to take it through the house, into the garden and then hoist it up over the balcony and in through the French doors. Good job we haven’t got the railings on the balcony yet!
Sunflowers and Saffron 