Finishing Touches

OK, so the title is a bit of a misnomer. The kitchen still isn't finished, but it is getting closer by the day. As we're meant to be doing a major loft re-fit in under two weeks, we're hoping that all the loose ends of kitchen work can be done by then in order to preserve everyone's sanity and access to tea and tasty noms.

We took the broken washing machine from downstairs to the dump, and yesterday the working one from the upstairs kitchen (soon to be our spare room) came downstairs to take it's place. One fridge that came with the house went on Freecycle, and we moved the upstairs fridge down to join the fridge I brought with me. We don't know the rating of the fridge which came with the house, but it was a lot newer than the one we freecycled so hopefully it's more efficient too. Mine is A rated, so despite the two fridges we are hopefully keeping bills down a bit. Eventually we may get a single full-height fridge, but that's a little way down the line at the moment.

A space which has been left for a large floor-to-ceiling pantry cupboard has been temporarily filled with shelving units which people didn't want any more. This is mostly because we have so much to do that building a large cupboard feels a little way off, and the shelves will make a good interim measure.

There are still shelves which need to be built for communal food/spice/tea supplies, but the one storage-building job which has been done is the magnificent pan rack. Everyone wanted to avoid having a Cupboard of Doom (you know the one: 13 saucepans, none of which fit inside each other properly, with all the lids rolling around and all the other kitchen gear balanced on top) and a pan rack seemed a good solution. Cassian is going to ruthlessly sort through our massive amalgamation of cooking equipment to leave us with a gloriously minimalist, yet functional, set of gear, and most of it will be hung up here for easy access. Huzzah!

Pan Rack of Glory next to our temporary pantry shelving

Just to sing it's praises a little more, the pan rack is made partly of various curtain poles from around the house which were no longer fit for purpose, and is height adjustable at the front so we can get it to a level where Flick (the shortest Golem) can reach things but Sven (the tallest Golem) doesn't hit his head all the time.

I think we're all feeling rather pleased, not only that we made something sturdy and practical, but that we're trying to make a shared house that feels beautiful and loved. This feels like a very satisfying contribution towards that goal, and we're all a bit happier because of it. Also, it has shiny bits :)

On a much more practical level, this mini-project was the first one which used our new budget proposing system, which I will write more about in another post. Happily it came in under budget too. Win all round.

- Hannah