Saturday 30 August 2014

Get an eyeful of this!

Once again, I haven't written for a while, have I? Not because of a lack of subject matter, as I have plenty of tell you about. I could tell you about my recent holiday, of floating in the Brittany sea early in the morning and the tiny fish swimming around me, of langoustines wriggling in the bag just before being plunged into hot water, and of the butteriest, sweet-yet-saltiest cakes known to man, but I seem to remember that I told you about all that last year twice and not a lot has changed since then, apart from the realisation that if you stay in a holiday home three years in a row, you get a kiss on both cheeks from the landlord and the neighbours start to speak to you. I could tell you about the children being off school for six weeks and the desperate need I have to be alone for a day, but I will get that soon enough. I could tell you about the art in my head waiting to be made, of beaches and sailing boats, of sunflowers and rape fields, but I think that ought to wait until it becomes reality. No, right now I want to, need to, tell you about my kitchen.

I always try to give you a bit of a visual treat when you pop by and today, it's easier than usual. If you know me, I apologise, I have been a complete kitchen bore for months so I'm hoping that if I blurt it all out here, I might get most of it out of my system. It's been an interesting journey. I had a brief and regrettable dalliance with the sleek handleless German, pans-in-drawers kind of kitchen. I planned on the kind of built-in ovens they have on the Bake Off with the doors that slide underneath, until I allowed my head to be turned by something very big, Italian and yellow. Heart over head. Reliable Germanic versus a swarthy unpredictable mediterranean type... better say no more. So then I planned the colour scheme: a big hunk of yellow with a nice soothing grey for the cabinets. I started shopping for grey accessories and I bought some heat-resistant wadding to make some coordinating trivets and pot holders:-

Then I had a strange and unexpected odyssey involving Farrow and Ball samples and the kitchen told me it couldn't stomach the insipid greys and that it wanted something altogether more lively. The trivet doesn't go at all. Ah well.

So a few months on, and with enormous thanks to the very clever and lovely guys at It Woodwork, it is all done, bar a final lick of paint, a few more boxes unpacked and a splashback behind the cooker (when will the husband come up with the goods?). Come and see (but excuse the photography, I still haven't managed to go on a course to do my camera justice yet)...

Meet my new magnificent yellow best friend...

And the matching radiator...

I think I knew it would be It Woodwork when I first saw their spice racks inside their larder doors; I've seen similar ones since with dowels, metal rods or just straight pieces of wood to hold in the spices but I laugh in their faces; mine are a much smilier shape...

The pan rack is a revelation: at first I thought it looked a bit small and that I'd never fit all my pans in. But it turns out that the more I pile onto it, the better it looks. And it's still on the wall. It feels like a giant game of Buckaroo. 

I love the new tap. It is amazing what you can find on Pinterest. So many dull taps. So many horrible taps. And then this one. It took a bit of hunting down, being only available in Sweden. I resurrected my ancient university Swedish and six weeks and a few thousand krona later, Bob was my uncle and my Swedish tap turned out to be made in Italy. Maybe it talks to the cooker in the night.

Then there is the dresser. The design started out as a perfectly normal dresser with shelves but I thought it might be good to have a few doors and drawers to hide the clutter in. Before school one morning I did a quick drawing of a bonkers idea:

And just look! The bonkers dresser now exists, only with straight lines instead of my wobbly ones!

It makes me feel pretty good to gaze up at one big yellow happy light, and another light covered by a  lampshade that I made out of a map of my favourite corner of Brittany (thanks so much Ruth for all your help)...

I guess it's just a love thing.