The kitchen is finished!

Lou and I aren't exactly quick. We had our kitchen fitted in 2002. We had it tiled in 2004. We had it decorated in about 2005. Since 2002 we've had bare floorboards in the "kitchen" end, and a reasonably minging bit of brown flowery carpet with underfelt and two layers of lino beneath it, on top of concrete, in the "living" end.

This year we decided that enough was enough, and we were sick of living in what we affectionately referred to as "Beirut". So I called Rick, the tiler we used to do our kitchen walls (if you live in the Manchester area he is in the Yellow Pages or Thomson Local as "RM Tiling") and asked him to come and tile the floor. After removing the carpet / underlay / lino combination and ripping my fingers to shreds in the process it looked something like this...


Note the manky concrete in the "living" end, and the exposed boards at the far end by the sink. Anyway, in two days Rick worked miracles and did an absolutely stunning job, levelling the floor and doing us proud. Once we got the furniture back in it looked more like this...


Needless to say we're over the moon with it.

From the other end, before Rick started...


And afterwards...


You can just make out the state the hall is in at the moment through the kitchen door, and the rest of the house is pretty much the same - lots of exposed plaster, holes gouged out etc. The electrician finished the lounge this morning and is back next week to do the rest of the house. Then we just have to wait for Eddie the decorator to come and that will be that - finished! About time too.