"What are you up to this weekend?"

Ah. That has become a loaded question for me, because invariably my weekend plans involve home improvements in some shape or form. I'd a chinwag with one of the girls in work last Friday, and when she asked the inevitable and my reply started with "Weeeell...", and she said "Oh God - are you still painting the kitchen cabinets?" I was fairly well shamed, by both the lack of progress and the fact that apparantly I talk about my DIY jobs waaaay too much.

In an attempt to deepen that sense of shame and hopefully have it spur me into action, here is a "Before" picture of the kitchen. (I'm really getting into the swing of this "Before" picture thing!)


Holy moly.

I'd forgotten how bad it was!

First thing we did was shelve the red canisters (the previous owners brought the red yokes hanging out of the window with them when they moved. I guess they really loved them. Ehem) and get rid of the breadbin. Yeh, I know, not exactly a giant leap for mankind, but you gotta start somewhere and the crappy wooden one that we inherited with a slatted, fold-up door had a gap in the top of it that elephants could have traipsed through, never mind flies. That was replaced with a ceramic duck-egg blue Nigella Lawson number with a dual purpose beech lid/breadboard, courtesy of a Debenhams gift card from Himself's aunt & uncle.

Next, we traded up to a silver 'n' black Brita kettle to tie in with the oven and the silver appliances we had in mind. You might think that this was another baby step, but we are in an area with water so hard you could trot mice on it. Seriously, the first few mugs of tea made with water boiled in that little grey kettleen (it was too small to be called a kettle) in the pic were undrinkable, and we are Big Tea Drinkers, so the matter had to be rectified stat.

The first big job (well, it was a little bit bigger than the last two) was to rip out the carcass around that big empty hole in the front left of the pic, which I always thought looked a bit like a lidless coffin standing on end. A freestanding silver Whirlpool fridge freezer lives there now. We also replaced the dark lino and then I began painting the kitchen cabinets.

That was around November of 2007, and, er, they're still not *quite* finito. Since then, the kitchen walls have been painted in Farrow & Ball's White Tie, a little white shabby chic wall-hung spice rack has been procured and hung, and the tap (which I appreciate you can't see in the photo above but it was so ugly that it actually depressed me) has been changed out for a new spring neck chrome model a bit like this one:

We've also mounted a beech paper towel holder to the underside of the press beside the microwave, and a little coffee cup tower like this one (but with pastel rather than primary coloured cups) that was a present from my good friends Steve and Deni-o has taken up residence beside the new Super Kettle:

The base cabinets got their final coat of paint a few weekends ago, and I really want to press on and get the rest of the bloody things done ASAP, but these things always move slowly in our house because I have to do them all on my tod. Himself has no interest in decorating, which would be fine if it was just because he's a bloke or didn't mind about fabric choices and whatnot, but Himself's lack of interest stems from viewing our house as a temporary living space.

We'll be there three years in August. Seriously, like, there are marriages that are more temporary.

I want to get the damn kitchen finished so that (a) I'll have a normal person's reply to the "What you doin' for the weekend?" question, and (b) I can - finally! - put up an "After" picture.

And if Himself's only contribution is to stop watching telly for a couple of hours - seriously, go to the gym, take a walk, read all those back issues of National Geographic that never so much as get leafed through - and make me the odd cup of fruit tea (I'm on a Twinings cranberry and sanguinello orange kick at the minute, yum), well, I'll be happy.