I’ve lost the last couple of days to flu — nothing serious, but Sirem has been very patient with the usual tragic man-flu whining. So this seems like a good moment to take stock with a progress report.
Currently, the kitchen is our big priority. As usual we’ve sat down with Sketchup to figure out what we want to build. Because the room is not that big, and there’s only the one door, we’ve found it much easier than when we designed our kitchen in Southampton. Basically the strategy is to build as much worktop space as possible and then to cover every available bit of wall with cupboards. Nobody ever complained that their kitchen had too much storage space, right?
Planned kitchen layout in Sketchup.
The door is at the back of the picture, and that slot on the front left wall is an old fireplace where we plan to keep the gas bottles for the stove. The window ends up traditionally placed over the sink, front right. The microwave and our small oven get stacked on top of each other, and there’s a chunk of bonus storage space above the fridge.
So far, we’ve started on some of the framing work, and found some 18mm plywood to serve as a base for the tiled worktops. We’ve been lining things up out in the courtyard to check that it’s all going to fit. Once we take the pieces into the actual kitchen, there will be a lot less room to move.
Kitchen cupboards and worktops starting to take shape. None of the kitchen walls are at right angles to each other, so there’s some fiddly bits with the carpentry.
At the risk of appearing to have gone full red-neck, here’s a shot of the nail guns I mentioned last time. They may look excessive but they’ve been extremely handy in putting together framing projects like the kitchen. Of course sometimes you have to use screws, but when you can get away with nails, the power to get twenty of them into the work piece inside a minute is just amazing. The little one, the staple gun, has probably been the big surprise: you can use it to put together something like a mitre-cut picture frame very easily, and it’s great for pinning up wire mesh for plastering.
Nail guns: the one on the left fires nails up to 5cm long, and is moderately scary. The one in the middle fires staples deep into timber, and is not so scary but will still hurt you. The one on the right fires 9cm nails and is absolutely terrifying.
This is what a box of 5000 wire-coiled 9cm nails looks like. I hope not to need to go back to the shop for a while.
Last week we put a solar hot water system in. Or, more correctly, we paid the professionals to put one in. Previously we’d been using an instant hot-water heater but that was going to lead to big electricity bills if we kept it up. Solar has been great so far, with plenty of hot water even on the cloudier days.
Our new solar hot water system, on the roof above the bathroom.
While we had the tools and timber out for the kitchen, we also thought we should put some kind of bed together for the cats that are sleeping outside. (Yes, I’m ashamed to say there is currently a terrible apartheid system in place where the pampered UK cats are sleeping indoors and the hard-grafting Turkish street cats are sleeping outdoors.)
Combined bench and cat box project. The cats were supposed to sleep underneath so people could sit on the top, but as you can see they had other ideas.
The idea was to make a box to keep the cats out of the wind, and to put some cushions and blankets inside to make it comfortable. We’ve since put a panel of clear plastic over the middle section to help them keep more body heat in there. They seem to appreciate it.
This is Suzi, one of Sütlaç’s kittens. How can you look at that face and not build some kind of shelter for her?
Zeytin is shocked to learn that the cats now also have a house.
On our way back from a walk today, we climbed the hill across the street to get a new view on our place. I really like the shot below, because you can see all the different bits and pieces that make up our little compound. From the front left, anti-clockwise, that’s the disused chicken coop, then the old house, the new house, the barn, and, if you look carefully in the foliage at the back, you can see the slab of metal roofing that keeps the rain off our clay oven.
Our farmhouse from a new angle.
And, in conclusion, a shot of a poplar tree to show the advance of the seasons…
Autumn colours in the village.
PS: there is one more thing. We really appreciate all the comments on the blog, but we’ve been a bit surprised to find how prevalent spam commenting is in the blog world. (Probably many of you out there already knew this.) At first I was manually approving or deleting every comment, but when the spam count got into the thousands it became overwhelming. So we’re currently relying on some spam filters that work on keywords. It makes my life a lot easier, but the downside is there’s a small chance that every now and then we’ll block a legitimate comment. If a comment of yours seems to go missing, I apologize in advance, and please feel free to email me and I’ll sort it out.
I love the way you connect sketchup to the developing outcomes. I’ve just bought a place myself, so might be getting into it too!
Fantastic: congrats on the purchase! Put some photos up somewhere so we can all be jealous of NZ scenery. :)
And definitely, give Sketchup a go. Personally I think it’s worth the learning curve because there’s so much you can do with it.
There ya go -more when the settlement goes through
https://www.google.co.nz/maps/@-40.3575608,175.5948347,3a,75y,238h,90t/data=!3m4!1e1!3m2!1sQLMuRHvmdMdQH7kdvbnZEA!2e0
Very nice! That street looks typically NZ. :) Congratulations again.
Love what you are doing with sketch up. A friend of mine has designed a ramp to assist old dogs onto beds and I suggested she use sketch up to create the plan. I will let you know how it goes. The changing of the seasons is really beautiful. Keep the blogs coming. I love them.
Thanks, Anne.
I think Sketchup could be very useful for your friend’s project. Is she doing something like this? http://i.imgur.com/XeZs2Nj.gif
Hi U2,
We’ve told the RSPCA about you two and they’re arranging a special award! St Francis of Assisi will probably want to arrange a visit as well!
First frost here yesterday, so starting to ‘wrap up’.
You’re household projects are most inspiring. It’s becoming so impressive that when we come we shall expect a Civic Welcome, brass bands, local dignitaries and all the trimmings.
Keep up the good work.
C & D
You are being too kind, as ever. Honestly, anyone else would do the same if they met the animals in question.
We will get to work on some banners to hang in the street for your arrival. ;)
And it’s getting colder here too: only about 6 degrees C outside right now (1:45am). I think that’s the lowest we’ve seen so far.
Were you guys as self sufficient in Southampton? Impressive stuff. Particularly impressed by the hot water tank.
Hi, Jane.
Not really, no: in Southampton we grew some vegetables and built a few pieces of furniture but that was about it. We are definitely learning as we go along!
I should stress that the solar hot water was installed by the guys who built it. It is much too neatly done to be our work. In fact our main role was to watch critically and make tea.
Impressed that you now have the capability to heat your own water. What’s the weather like today? Winter has arrived in Leeds. Brrrrr.
I remember Yorkshire winters all too well. Hang in there! :)
Right now, sitting in our room with the windows open at midday, it’s 17 degrees. But to be fair, it’s been colder than that some days. Today is only that warm because it’s overcast. The clear days can be more like a 12 or 13 degree maximum temperature. And at night it has gotten down to… I think 3 degrees is our record low so far. But night time minimum is more typically about 8.
A friend has asked me to give some more details on the solar hot water system. The Yaksan brochure has a few diagrams that might tell the story better than I can.
Cold water goes into the little tank on top, and then makes its way down into the 24 vacuum-sealed glass heating tubes. It’s the water itself in the tubes, not any sort of heat-exchanging system. Then the larger tank is a heavily insulated storage space for the heated water.
The whole thing cost us TRY 1750 installed, which is almost exactly 500 GBP at current exchange rates.
Good work! Anjo came back from Portugal with a strange obsession to tile everything. So we are watching closely to see what your worktops turn into, as we are also expanding the surfaces here.
Also, this.
Or rather, this.
That’s pretty much how our purchase went.
“He mean a Lexus but he don’t know it.”
And will keep you up to date on the tiling. Portugal is a good place to get the bug for it.