The end of day four into the kitchen renovation.

Today the remaining 70s brown carpet was removed from the dining end of the kitchen revealing some very colourful old tiles, and we’ve also found the remnants of some plain grey vinyl tiles in another part of the kitchen.

Under the carpet we found the remnants of what must have been the wood fired oven. The boys have had to chip away concrete from over the bricks and have poured in a self levelling compound to smooth over the floor. Unfortunately, the local hardware store were low on supplies of the levelling compound, so we’re hoping what they had will be enough. We can now see there once was a single door going from the kitchen to the lounge.

We can see the original kitchen was wall papered. Then at some stage the wood panelling was added over the original walls.

We keep asking ourselves why they didn’t do the job properly and remove the existing wall finish before adding the wood panels. Now, because we’re short of time and because we’re tidying the house up to be used for renting, we’re doing what the last people did. We’ve added another layer rather than remove the existing layers.

Some time in the future we may be re-doing the kitchen for our own use. This will include adding a wide verandah and cutting out french doors from the kitchen to provide access. At that stage the house will have been rented for some time, so a new kitchen, or at least a bit of a make over will not doubt be needed again, and that’s when we’ll do ‘the proper job’. If, however, we don’t get to add those touches for ourselves then I’m sure some future owner will be scratching their head and wondering what on earth possessed this particular owner to add ‘yet another layer’.

Paul’s dad has been moved from hospital to a temporary medium level care facility. He’ll stay there until we arrive. We’ve booked our air fare for 14th October. So, we’ll fly to Melbourne on the 13th and arrive in Manchester on the 15th. OMG! I hope we get everything finished.