The kitchen of the future

We’re getting a new kitchen. This is an exciting time for us, and also for everyone we know, so please rest assured that we will be sharing stories and pictures of this thrilling adventure at every opportunity.

Having decided to buy our kitchen from one of the big kitchening retailers, we had the room measured up and then attended a design appointment where all the possibilities for filling a space with plywood cupboard units were explored in full. We compared paint samples, touched various worktop textures and considered the merits of many differnet taps. Finally, when our choices had been entered into the supercomputer, we held hands and watched as our brand new kitchen was rendered in Hollywood-style 3D graphics before our very eyes. The kitchenologist even printed out a picture of it so we could take it home and gaze on it in our own time.

Our present kitchen, as you may recall, has pale yellow doors and a wooden worktop, arranged in a U-shape around the walls and sticking out on a peninsula. Our new kitchen, which is going to be totally different and better in every regard, will have creamy off-white doors and a natural stone-coloured quartz worktop, arranged in a U-shape around the walls and sticking out on a peninsula.

While the new kitchen will be far better built than the old one, incorporating improvements such as the upper cupboards not leaning precariously off the walls and the worktops not soaking up colourful patches of everything we’ve ever placed on them, the clever 3D render is not that detailed.

When we got home with our print-out, we excitedly stood in the dining room and held it up at the appropriate angle in front of the old kitchen. It appeared for all the world to be a picture of our existing kitchen.

We have put the picture away.

Mysterious shed

Picture this:

Two men are sat watching some good old fashioned rock and roll music at a gig. They’ve already had to endure the poor organisational skills of Huddersfield, Wetherspoons meals without the drinks (because the wait for drinks was longer than the food for some reason), rain, snow, sleet, drunk Yorkshire idiots and a winding, zig-zagging queue to get inside.

The support act were fine. The sun came out and the woman took her top off. If only the sound system was decent enough to make what she was shouting about audible but you can’t have everything I suppose.

The first band came on and despite numerous jokes at their expense (not from me), a jolly good time was had by all, especially when they did a rousing cover of ‘Enter Sandman’ by Metallic and a soothing rendition of ‘Africa’ by Toto.

The second band began their set with a weird recorded message by some semi-famous actor guy who I recognise the face of but can never remember his name. About four songs in the band suddenly decided to leave the stage.

“What’s going on?” everyone asks.

Cue the stagehands and roadies going backstage and trying to wheel on what can only be described as the world’s most unnecessarily large shed (FYI it looked more like a log cabin to me, Kev’s description is the official description though because he said it first). The shed is so big they struggle to get it onto the stage because a corner keeps getting caught on something. Manoeuvre, pivot, manoeuvre, pivot. A few minutes later it’s wheeled into the middle and the drummer climbs on top.

The band then do a two further songs before sacking the shed off and putting it back where they found it.

Was the shed some kind of protest? Probably not. Were the two songs that the band sung whilst it was there based around sheds? Did they sing ‘Sweet Shed of Mine’ and ‘My Love (How I Shed Those Tears For You)’? No they did not. Did the shed have anything to do with what was happening onstage? Not in the slightest.

It’s times like these that does make you wonder if anything actually makes sense anymore.

Jolly good: free wood

I started the ”jolly good” series a couple of years ago when the world seemed less than jolly good and we all needed a nice cheering up. It only lasted a couple of posts, but actually it’s nice to see something positive, so I’m going to carry on labelling my good news under the ”jolly good” banner.

Here’s some good news now. Our house came with a wood burning stove in the living room, which is great but more difficult to use than the central heating, since we have mains gas, but no way of getting logs delivered by underground pipeline direct into the stove. Logs have to be bought, which isn’t always cheap, and have to be brought home somehow, which isn’t easy in a small car.

The people next door are landscape gardeners. The man over the road had a large pear tree in his garden that needed to come down. The people next door were happy to cut it down for him, but couldn’t be bothered going to the hassle of getting rid of the bits. We got a knock on the door. Could we take some of the wood, maybe, and save everyone a trip?

Yes. Yes we could. In fact we could take all of it.

I am treating this windfall as a birthday present from the universe. Jolly good.

Floor “saga”

Not a saga, not really. I tried to think of the right word and all I could come up with was ‘ragu’ and that’s definitely not the right one. Nobody wants a floor ragu.

Here it is in all its sexy glory. My new hallway flooring, floor hall. Look at it as it stretches off into the distance because, yes, it is quite a long hallway. It would take a few strides to get up and down there, even with Kev and his gigantic pair of legs.

The original planning phase begin in November of last year. Me being the ultimate slob I am decided to wait until Christmas was done before commencing any work. Then I temporary lost my hearing in one ear and had to wait until Boots was ready to suck out the various globules of wax hiding in my ear canal. Then some other things happened that stopped me from doing it. Then my installer got covid. It’s been one hell of a ride.

Don’t look too closely at the edges though because Council architecture, like most things, is not infallible and after sixty years there has been a bit of movement. How do I know this? Because when we were laying the floor from the front door down towards the living room the wall seemed to bend slightly to the right meaning the perfect symmetry we had going on at the beginning wasn’t present anymore. The further in we went a thin section remained uncovered along the edge. It wasn’t even a straight line too, the git. This then meant that muggins here had to use all the offcuts to try and wallpaper over the cracks (so to speak) to avoid spoiling the illusion of goodness.

Patience is a virtue. In my post-covid blues state, off work and with not much else to be getting on with, I cut the remaining pieces needed to finish the job. Similar to all great works of art, from a distance the integrity and the beauty remains intact. Get close though, dangerously close, and all its shortcomings will become apparent. I therefore ask that you only inspect the floor using your regular eyes, possibly from six feet away, wearing a pair of sunglasses and being distracted by genies.

I don’t think that’s asking too much?

When is a saga not a saga? When it’s a… ragu. No, it’s still not coming to me.

Slime Mystery

There has been an invasion of my privacy and I want the world to know about it!

In-between running away from cows, I do like to take the time to keep my flat tidy. I had noticed recently that the windows haven’t been cleaned since I moved in almost two years ago so I did make an effort over the Bank Holiday weekend to buff them to a suitable sheen. I also made sure to put all the washing away and clean the dishes although admittedly I half-heartedly hoovered on Monday evening; it needed a charge and I soldiered through regardless.

It’s a level of domesticity that I don’t normally document because it interferes with my macho image. You can’t be seen as a spokesperson for toxic masculinity if you’re too busy wiping down the kitchen tops and dusting the blancmanges (or whatever it is that people dust).

Whence I awoke in the fresh morn though I noticed a familiar sight; over the living room carpet, in and around the sofa and armchair, there was a trail of glistening slime. It’s fragile and tranquil beauty was a wonder to behold, what a marvel indeed. It was also a huge annoyance in the backside given the time I had spent trying to keep the bugger clean.

What is it that keeps messing up my carpet? If David Bellamy was here, and he’s not, something I am very pleased about, he would probably say that it was a small insect, a woodlouse or a spider, that was carrying out some antics during the night when I slept. The faint lines of silver goo were to indicate the presence of my fellow animals, my houseguests, who were happy to live in a steady harmony in that I would be there during the day and they were there to fill their boots during the evening.

I aspire to something else though, an uneasy thought process which could indicate something much more deadlier and much more sinister. What if it isn’t insects scurrying about the place, what if it is English television and radio presenter Andy Crane who has taken to compressing his body into a flat state and living underneath my sofa? He waits in some kind of bizarre chrysalis, a state of hibernation, lying dormant for most of the month but every so often comes out and leaves a long, winding reminder that he is there and he isn’t going anywhere.

What is his reason for being there? How did he get in? Did he fly in when I had the bathroom window open to get some air in? I suppose we’ll never really know. I do, however, try to be considerate when sitting on the living room furniture so as not to damage him if he is there. I would hate to squash the old boy.

Virtual house tour

Since we bought a slice of Hampshire, and abandoned London for the delights of country living, we’ve been showing more or less anyone around our house. Friends? Yes. Family? Yes. Friends of family? Yes. The neighbours? Yes. Some guy who just wanted to pick up some furniture we sold on eBay? Yep.

Not everyone has had the thrill of the tour yet, though, and we understand that for some the wait is becoming intolerable. So, to help out, I’d like to extend an invitation for you to join us now on a virtual tour.

‘Shed Avengers’ – mini review

Like Ian, I recently played a new game, and I wanted to tell you about it, but unlike Ian, I didn’t enjoy mine very much.

‘Shed Avengers’ is a highly lifelike simulation game in which you take on the role of a new homeowner who discovers that the felt covering the roof of his already poorly built garage is now being peeled away by the wind and causing items stored in the garage to become damp.

It has to be said that the graphics are incredibly good, as are the haptic feedback techniques used through the game controllers which really do make you feel like you’re climbing around on a flimsy wooden structure while alone on the premises. I really did feel like there was the potential to fall through the roof, sustain severe injuries and then lie there undiscovered for many hours.

The early part of the game is all about solving puzzles. It begins with the apparent aim of doing the job from the sides, safely standing on a ladder, but it quickly becomes apparent that this isn’t possible, and your hapless protagonist is forced instead to find a way to climb up onto the rickety roof using a ladder that’s a bit too short for the job. Once you figure that out, the first level, removing the tattered felt sheeting, is easily completed, but the game quickly becomes much harder. Level 2 involves painting a layer of wood preserver onto the roof while crawling around on it, but without the layer of felt to stabilise things, the unsecured timbers move around like the keys of a piano when your character’s weight is placed on them, and each must be painted all the way up to the apex of the roof before you can move on.

There then follow several more levels where the puzzles are less difficult and the gameplay less enjoyable, including lifting 20kg rolls of felt onto the roof without them either rolling off or falling through; hammering 400 clout nails into very flexible woodwork that bounces away when you try to strike it; painting a layer of bitumen adhesive under the felt joints while trying not to slide off the roof because it’s started raining; and finally, attempting to secure the last sheet of felt along the apex even though the flimsy stupid god damn roofline is like a rollercoaster so the stupid bloody thing won’t lie flat.

I will admit that my enjoyment of this already frustrating game was marred by my relatively low score on the final level, where I was unable to fully solve the puzzle and ended up completing the game with two wrinkles nailed in to the final felt sheet. If I were truly committed to the game, I’d go back and play it again to try and get a perfect score, but for me this was one to play once and then move on.

I’m not sure I want to play any more in the roofing and tiling series, and anyway my attention is now mostly taken up with the forthcoming release of Impossible Floating Shelf DIY Master, which is coming out in the next couple of months. When I’ve tried it I’ll let you know how I get on.

Newsboost – Hill Ham Hurrah

Here at Newsboost we have been granted exclusive access to Kevin’s new kitchen worktop and, in my humble opinion, especially one which knows sod all about quartz, it’s a bit of a something special.

We were also granted an exclusive interview with the man himself.

News berk: So what do you think?
Kevin: I think it’s the most wonderful thing I’ve ever seen in my entire life. Ian had to loan me some of his spare eyes so I could gaze at the glaze a little bit more.
News berk: After all the time you spent getting it right, was it worth it?
Kevin: Absolutely. 105 days it may have taken, I may have lost most of my hair and destroyed the neighbouring village in my frustrations but it’s over now.
News berk: What do you intend to use the kitchen worktop for first? What’s top o’ the worktop to-do list top?
Kevin: I’m going to lay out a chaise lounge of cheeses for the kids and some very sensual cakes for me and the wife. It’s going to be a great night.
News berk: What advice would you give to any other aspiring kitchen worktop enthusiasts out there?
Kevin: Don’t do it.

Pouring
Beans

Category: Abodes