House renovations and clean up completed

Celebrations are now in order.   We have achieved it.   We have got our maisonette in order, and it looks great.  We are very proud of our endeavours. 

We have a beautifully renovated bedroom with a new ceiling, a renovated cupboard in the kitchen, reorganised kitchen cupboards and drawers, an extension on the bookshelves in the study, and a new bench and shelves for the laptop and the associated technological accessories.  We have also tidied and cleaned out all the other cupboards in the house, including the dreaded job of cleaning out the cupboard under the outside stairs, which is damp and full of cob webs.   

We can now sit back and enjoy our hard work, and Patrick's work on achieving miracles with the ceiling and walls of our bedroom.    We still need to replace the ceiling and shower in the bathroom, and take the kitchen cupboard doors to a spray painter in order to achieve a uniform colour and look in the kitchen.   But these jobs are minor compared to the work completed during the past two months.  

Walter measuring up the new shelves for the kitchen cupboard.   He is smiling too, which is great, as he is working on his birthday.   I was keen to get the cupboard finished before the family came to dinner.   

 The booze has been taken out of the washing basket, which had been left in a very hot conservatory for two weeks.   Does alcohol explode?    Luckily the bottles were still intact when we arrived back from Holland.  The neighbours may have been covered in exploding alcohol.   Well I am guilty of emptying some of the bottles down the drain (not down my throat, honestly) as they were either unidentified and mysterious bottles bought in Italy and France, or they contained only small amounts of alcohol.   The drains smelled very sweet afterwards.  The bottles on this shelf have all been washed and polished.  And ready to drink.

 The empty cupboard with the frame in place.   I am very impressed with Walter's work.   Unfortunately Walter did not finish in time for his birthday dinner, so I moved everything from the dining table and found places for them around the house.   A bit of double handling there.  

 Finally everything is in the cupboard, so neat and tidy too.   The shelves to the right (not seen in this picture) are very deep, so these shelves can hold lots of kitchen necessities, as well as the booze.   When we moved into the house, 20 years ago, the hot water tank was housed in this cupboard.   But of course we now have a small combi boiler in the kitchen for the hot water and central heating.  And a lovely big cupboard.

 The renovated bedroom with its lovely white ceiling and walls, and laminated floor.   The pictures have been  cleaned and hung back in the room, with some changes though.   We need to keep the lines clean and simple.   'House and Garden' or 'Home Beautiful', here we come!

 The books are no longer stacked in front of each other, in a frantic attempt to house our books, with the end result being a cluttered and untidy bookshelf. I must admit I did move quite a few books to the bookshelves in the spare room and the shelves in the lounge room, but the extra space has been well used.

We managed to find a narrow bookshelf, from Ikea of course, which fits perfectly on top of our old bookcase.  And I can see that there is room left, so we can buy more books.   Good news there.

 And Walter no longer has a desk top computer, on top of a huge computer table, with numerous cables dangling behind it, gathering dust.   He now has a super slim line laptop, which is hooked to a larger screen above it.   He also build a bench with a shelf underneath, in order to house all the necessary technological gear, including the Wii.     Our study is the grandchildren's favourite room, as it has benches, and paper and pens and pencils, plus lots of whizzy technological toys.  They also liked the old desk top computer.  But sorry children, it has had to go, so I hope you like our new arrangement.

And now we are ready for our forthcoming guests.   Aaron, Kylie, Mia, Abi and Raphy from Holland, and Brian and Susanne from New Zealand.