Tag: kitchen

This is our kitchen sink for the next month. It works remarkably well.

• Tap: Hornbach, €25
• Connectors and attachments: Karwei, €16
• Dinky footstool for mounting the tap on: Hornbach, €7
• Plastic basin: Vrijbuiter, €3
• Ikea Lack table (2nd-hand): Noppes Kringloopwinkel, €2.50
• Funnel to make it easier to pour out the water from the basin: Hornbach, €2

The new concrete got poured on Friday, and was dry enough to walk on by Saturday. Knowing that we’d have a blank space for a kitchen for the rest of the month, Abi and I set out on a mini expedition to find some equipment to make the space more practical and liveable. We got everything for the improvised sink above, and also a decent table on which we can set up a portable stove and other cooking equipment. Abi built a frame with spare wood from the construction project and backed it with brown paper to act as a splash-back.

Once the tilers do their work (still not sure when that will be), we’ll move the table and other equipment into the empty space for the next several weeks. Not the finished product, of course, but it will give us a slightly greater sense of permanence and stability, and will allow us to reclaim the living room.

Burger King is running a Call of Duty: Modern Warfare promotion in some markets, of which the Netherlands is one. The UK isn’t (yet). None of us in the household play CoD, but Callum in Scotland does. We get BK, he gets the special tokens from the promotional meal. Win-win.

The concrete from last week didn’t set properly. Instead of laying the floor tiles, the builders had to rip out the old concrete, which was brittle like honeycomb. We’ll be getting a new pour of concrete tomorrow, and a finishing surface layer on Wednesday, which blows up the scheduled kitchen fitting on Thursday and Friday. The next available slot the kitchen fitters have is 1 and 2 December, another month away.

Once the new concrete dries, the tilers will be able to come back and do their work, maybe at the end of next week. But for the whole of November we’ll have to live with just a blank space where the kitchen should be. We’ll set up a table with a portable electric stove, trundle in the old dishwasher, and hook up a couple of taps to the water pipes to make it more livable. But disappointing nonetheless.

The white paint with blue accents from the painter’s tape gives the empty kitchen a slightly Mediterranean feel.

The far wall has the thickest layer of player, and it was taking a long time to dry out. This was our improvised apparatus to help the process along.