Kitchenpreparations from Monday 14 until 20 November Sunday, 20-Nov-22 21:23:06 CET

Appliances installed Monday, 05-Dec-22 20:32:28 CET

Sunday, 27-Nov-22 21:39:32 CET

New kitchen

This week the carpenter came and mounted the kitchen.

Monday 21 November

It was a misty morning; we were well prepared for the kitchen and anticipation of reaching the next milestone in the building of our house. Arjan arrived well on time, and together with him came Rob. They started carrying kitchen parts into the living room. Now it was more than full of stuff. It was good we had cleared up so much in advance.

Arjan and Rob built the kitchen. They found that one of the outlets would come in an inconvenient place but could be moved easily.

I had taken this day off, so I built a scaffold outside the kitchen on the north side of the house while Arjan and Rob built the kitchen inside the house. This is so that it will be easier to mount the ventilation when we are ready. I made the scaffold reach over the entrance door, so I could also mount the lamp above the door. It was just a tiny scaffold with 6 poles.

Last week I told in the blog that I feared I had forgotten the rain gauge with water and that it might have been damaged. Today I checked it, and it still had ice inside and, add to that, a fresh new crack. The rain gauge had indeed broken because of the cold weather. Too bad.

The cupboards are hanging on strips. It is possible to take down the cupboards if that is something you need to do. For example, when we put up the ventilation above the stove, it might be easier to take down the cupboard while making the hole. I will talk to the ventilation specialist about this when he comes later this week.

The east side of the kitchen has most of the workspace and cupboards. We will have tiles below the cupboards and above the workbench. This is still something we need to figure out.

On the west side of the kitchen, we will have a narrower workbench with a couple of planks above it. It also has led light integrated into it. It was a bit complicated to get the light in the correct place. Here in the photo, it was still sufficient light from the windows, but later in the evening, we could test the led lights for real. As I said earlier in this blog, I was hesitant about the light, but today I am convinced it will be just right.

Here is the east side of the kitchen as Arjan and Rob left it today. We were pleased with the look of things. It will be exciting to see what it looks like when the benchtops are in place. Arjan is not an electrician, so he will not install the switches to turn on and off the kitchen light. I tried to reach our electrician to see if he could install the switches for us.

We will have the microwave oven in the west part of the kitchen. Obviously, it can be hot above that oven, which dictates how close the planks could be to each other. We do not have everyday stuff on the top plank; that is a guess.

The look here also depends on the fridge and the freezer, and they arrive next week, so we still don't know what this will look like.

In the evening, we turned on the led light to see what it would look like. I think it was pretty.

I work from home tomorrow, so I will not have time to spend with Arjan and Rob, but I think they will be ready well before lunch.

It is warmer again, but the winter salad is devastated. I have seen on YouTube how a gardener made a little tent above the salad bed to prolong the season. He even made the tent double-layer; in this case, that would work because we only had freezing temperatures for a day. This is something I will look into one day. It is also so that we need to figure out how to put up nets against cabbage whiteflies.

Tuesday 22 November

Today I worked from home while Arjan and Rob finished installing the kitchen. Arjan is the older man, and Rob is the younger man. They came from the stone masonry where they had picked up the stone countertops. I thought it was not so much work they had to do today, but it took longer than I had expected. Although I have to say I was not sure what they still had to do. They finished the interior of the cupboard below the sink and mounted handles, but the most significant task for today was to put the countertop in place.

It has three slabs of stone, and one has a hole for the stainless steel sink. It is a large sink. It is a brittle material, so they were cautious when maneuvering with the countertop.

When they arrived in the kitchen, they put it down and talked about how to get it in place without breaking it. It succeeded without any problems. I realized that this material is not suitable for just any treatment. It is not possible to stand on the countertop. You might be thinking that standing on a countertop is not something you should do, and I can agree with that, but I am not sure I never stood on the countertop we had in our old house. It never broke, so that is good. Now we want to see that this countertop will also stay intact. I asked Arjan to insert extra support under the middle of the surface, just in case.

It looks really good with the stone surface on top of the cupboards. I am delighted. The two other slabs are much smaller, making them easier to implement.

The countertops were fastened with glue to the cupboards, and a list was put on the bench.

Below the cupboards, a baseboard was installed. I asked Arjan how I would install the dishwasher because I thought I had to do that myself. He then insisted on coming and mounting the front for the dishwasher. That is the only built-in appliance in this kitchen. All the rest of the appliances will be free-standing machines.

When Arjan and Rob left, I asked them to wave to the camera, and of course, they did. It had been a pleasure to have them as guests to mount the kitchen.

Now we have things to do, the appliances will need to arrive, and it would be nice to have the tap water and drain installed, including water and drain for the dishwasher. That will be something I will talk about with our plumber and ventilation specialist. He will also help us with the exhaust from the stove ventilation.

I also tried contacting the electrician to mount the on-off button for the led lights but couldn't reach him so far.

So now when all is finished, you can use the kitchen? The kit is still drying this evening, so we cannot use it even for casual stuff. But what do we do with the dish then? Well, we wash the dish in the workplace, it is not that advanced, but it works.

Wednesday 23 November

This morning I worked from home. After lunch, two buses arrived on the driveway; the electrician and the plumber that came to help with the kitchen.

The transformers of the LED lights were connected to on-off switches. That was a straightforward task since we had prepared tubes for the wires.

The plumber installed a siphon for the sink. We were worried I had not used a PVC pipe when I installed the temporary siphon, but he concluded I had used a white PVC pipe.

It is such a nice feeling when water comes out from the crane, both hot and cold water. It is also handy that the water can flow into the drain. Both of these features are necessary to make it complete.

I asked them to wave to the camera when they left, and it worked! I feel blessed to have friendly people around me who can come and help with their expertise. Perhaps this blog's new gimmick is to have people wave to the camera?

We placed the temporary fridge-stove combination at the location of the future stove because we will not get the appliances until next week. It looks a little daft with this unfashionable combination tucked into a kitchen built by the carpenter.

Thursday 24 November

I worked from the office. Now when things are getting together, I am delighted with the result. We still have plenty of things to do, but we are enjoying this moment.

We figured out the stove would be too low for our kitchen. I called the supplier to get devices for increasing the height of the stove, but it does not exist. I will need to look into that when the stove arrives.

Friday 25 November

Work from the office again. DW went to see her friends in the evening. It was late before we went to bed.

Saturday 26 November

It is incredible how much spare time is lost in going to work. Now it is the weekend, and we can continue to work on the kitchen and living room project. We want to remove the temporary kitchen and give all things a new and better place.

We got friends visiting us. They brought cakes from the farmer's market. It was nice to catch up with the latest news on what they are doing, and we told them about our progress. They were impressed by the work of the carpenter.

When contemplating the progress of our house in general, I must say that it surprises me a little bit that we have not come further this year. Selling the old house took more time than I had anticipated. The year has not come to an end yet, so there is still plenty of things that will happen but nonetheless.

The temporary storage table along the south wall got dismantled. We moved the things to the new kitchen. It is the temporary kitchen things we moved. The only cupboard we avoided filling is the little cupboard in the northeast corner of the kitchen, where we will need to make a hole through the wall. The ventilation pipe for the cooker hood. When the ventilation specialist comes to us, he can install that; keeping it empty makes it easier to take down.

We filled up a box with things to bring to the second-hand shop. We still have the plates, cutlery, glasses, and cups in boxes we packed from the old house. We will need to remove the temporary stuff when we unpack those boxes.

Then we went to the second-hand shop and delivered our box. DW found a book about gardening. What is this about second-hand shops all the time? Well, it takes much fewer natural resources to reuse something already produced and used before. An added benefit is that the product has a proven quality when sold at a second-hand shop. For me, robust design is something I started to appreciate much more than the latest fad. There are a couple of things we still buy new, such as underwear. There are other things like, for example, a motion detection sensor that perhaps did not exist long ago, but then we try to combine a separate sensor with a second-hand shop lamp. For the rest, we pretty much try to buy things at second-hand shops.

I will also look into buying second-hand goods and modifying the product. We will see how that goes. This is not a dogma; it is something we try to achieve, and sometimes it fails.

When we came back home, I mounted lamps above the kitchen table. It is coming together; it feels good. I have been thinking about exactly how good it feels. How should I describe that? The kitchen and the living room are essential in our daily lives. With the appliances, we can do nice things. The room is both for meeting other people and rest. We are not interested in luxury, but rather that things are robust and functional. That way, we can use it for the rest of our lives.

We have not had access to an oven for half a year. I miss it. This kitchen has slightly more working space, so there can be more people working in the kitchen simultaneously.

I look forward to all the possibilities to do things in the kitchen. When I get the workplace sorted, I will be even more excited.

In the evening, we lit a fire in the woodstove for the first time this season. That was really nice. A wood stove in the living room was an absolute must for our new house. Now it is here, and it works really well. I inserted three blocks of wood, and it burned for two hours.

Sunday 27 November

It was a grey morning. The weather forecast claimed it would rain the whole day, but that did not happen. It was moist and overcast the entire day, but it did not rain until evening.

DW stayed indoors unpacking kitchen things from our old house. Plates, cups, etc.

I went outside, moving the sheep's fence so they could graze on the south side of the house. We keep the sheep in a smaller area overnight and let them out to graze a more expansive area over the day. That is the idea right now.

When the sheep fence was done, I decided to reinstate the protective paper on the wall in the kitchen. We will put ceramic tiles there but not now. I have no idea when but we need to work on that plan in due time. To ensure that the wall is not getting too greasy, we put up a protective paper, to be sure. I remembered to take a photo of the paper, but later, when inspecting the photo, I could see it was blurred. Well, it is the photo I got, so that is that.

I cut out a 46 centimeters wide paper band and mounted it on the wall. This time I cut out the holes for the electrical outlets so the frames would overlap nicely. It took a little more precision to do that, but on the other hand, it became beautiful.

Tonight we decided what seeds etc., to order from Vreekens seeds. Previously we ordered seeds for the season of 2021 on 5 March 2021 that same year, and that was not particularly successful. I wrote about that on 26 May 2021. For the 2022 season, we ordered on 29 October 2021. That was much better.

Order number	Dutch name	English name	Latin name
024050	LANGE RODE KROTEN 'Forono', 4 g	Beetroot	Beta vulgaris Conditiva
176520	RODE SPITSKOOL 'Vysoké', 1 g	Pointed Red Cabbage	Brassica oleracea capitata var. Rubra
307047.2	RODE PLANTUITJES OVERWINTEREND 'Red Arrow'	Red onion "Red arrow."	Allium cepa cepa
307045.2	GELE PLANTUITJES OVERWINTEREND 'Shakespeare'	Yellow onion "Shakespeare."	Allium cepa cepa
406020.1	AARDAPPELS 'Burkys Rote', 0,5 kg	Potatoes	Solanum tuberosum
536950	Lobelia erinus "Crystal Palace," 2500 seeds	Lobelia Compact bedding, edging varieties	Lobelia erinus
583165	Cyclamen coum rubrum, 20 seeds	Eastern sowbread	Cyclamen coum rubrum
584420	Dianthus Carthusianorum 'Feuerglut', 700 seeds (1 g)	Carthusian pink	Dianthus carthusianorum 'Feuerglut.'
511100	Catharanthus roseus 'Little Mix', 300 seeds (0,5 g)	Periwinkle	Vinca rosea

I also ordered a new rain gauge since the old one broke.

That concludes this week's blog. Thanks for reading! Next week the appliances will arrive. That is also exciting.