A piece of history

Last night I was browsing through the real estate section of the local paper and came across a photo of a house that I knew immediately was by the same builder who constructed our first home. I can pick one of their houses from a mile away - they had a portfolio of about six or seven floorplans and would buy up blocks of land in a street and knock up a row of spec homes.

This one caught my eye and I had to have a squiz online at the photos, because I could see from the teeny pic in the paper, that they had the same kitchen colour scheme we originally had. The layout is different, but the colour, materials and quality are exactly what we endured for about 14 years before we ripped the whole thing out and had a new kitchen installed:



What do you think? Classy, eh? No overhead cupboards (I was so jealous of our neighbour who had the cupboard above the oven like this one; we had nothing but plaster....), no rangehood, and the colours! Those cheap plastic grip thingies on the cupboards (which were solid chipboard inside; nice!), the stylish brown plastic tap handles, and those TILES. I can't believe this house still has the original oven....

Oh, you should have seen the bathroom. Wait, I'll show you:



We didn't have anything as flash as this - no cupboard under our basin, just air, and no vanity top extending over the bath. (Again, I was jealous of the neighbour who had this house).

I'd somehow forgotten how bad it was, since we renovated kitchen and bathroom back in 2001. But looking at these photos, I'm not sure whether to laugh or cry....


The hilarious thing is, this house is advertised as "renovated". Apart from the floor tiles in the living rooms, which look to be c. 1990, and the addition of evaporative cooling, I can't see a single sign of renovation here. Unless that's now real estate speak for "had a paint job in the last five years".

It fits!

The hunt for the perfect skinny kitchen bin is over:







Over the past year and a bit, the sight of the grotty old kitchen tidy sitting at the end of my bench has driven me insane. It was the first thing I saw every time I walked into the room - not quite the sort of feature I had in mind. If we had people over, I'd hide it in the pantry.

Thankfully, it's now been banished to the garage. :o)

And speaking of fabulous storage ideas...

When you have high ceilings and you're only 160cm tall, reaching the upper shelves in your overhead cupboards, or anything in the corner where you need to lean over the bench, is a bugger.

All our most frequently used items are under the bench, or on the lowest shelves in the overheads, and I keep a step in the pantry so I can reach higher things when I have to. But getting the wine glasses out of the cupboards altogether was a stroke of genius.

Two racks side by side hold six red, six white and six champagne....perfect!