More Fermented Foods, and New Cheese Maker

Kombucha

Today I was busy as usual on a Friday with my kombucha, brewing a new batch.

On the left is my large gallon jar ready for the next batch. Beside it, in the smaller bowl, is the scoby resting in some kombucha. (Scoby = “Symbiotic Colony [or Culture] Of Bacteria and Yeasts.”) I was pleased today to discover that the scoby has grown sufficiently to be separated. On its underside was the original small disc of scoby that I bought on Ebay, and I was able to pull it away from its larger “baby” and I can now pass this on to my friend, who wants to start making kombucha. For now, it’s gone back in the jar with its mother, until my friend is able to come over.

In the larger bowl, I have just strained last week’s batch of kombucha, and behind that bowl you can see the bottles lined up, ready for me to decant the kombucha. This time I have decided not to do the second fermentation because much as I like it, I think I prefer the raw kombucha. Both are extremely good for you. I drink it as it is, and it’s also one of the ingredients in the 6-ingredient rehydration drink that I make every day (having an ileostomy I have to guard against the very real danger of dehydration). This delicious drink is made with fresh lemon juice, maple syrup, Himalayan pink rock salt, coconut water and kombucha, topped up to a litre with filtered water. I make it every evening and put the bottle in the fridge overnight so it’s ready for the morning.

Behind the smaller bowl is a jar of honey that someone gave my hubby today, from their own bees. I am looking forward to sampling that! I adore honey, and all the more so if it’s locally produced. You can also see the red ring binder which is my personal recipe book. The six bottles are now filled and in the fridge, and the large jar is back in the airing cupboard, complete with both scobys, fermenting for another week.

The kombucha is going very well, and apart from a bit of time spent on it once a week, it is very little bother to make, and it is happy to be left alone to do its stuff for the rest of the week.

Kefir Cheese

Today I was very pleased that both my parcels arrived from Amazon, sooner than I expected. In the first was another four Mason jars, this time with wide mouths (I bought narrow mouths last time by mistake, but it doesn’t matter because I can still use them). The second parcel contained my new kefir cheese maker. I had spotted this online several weeks ago and thought it looked really good but I wasn’t sure I could justify what I considered to be rather a high price tag for something which is fairly basic and doesn’t involve electricity. In the end, however, I decided it probably was worth getting, because making the cheese with a muslin cloth in a sieve over a bowl isn’t very satisfactory. Because the handle of the sieve sticks out, there isn’t room for it in the fridge, and it takes hours to drain, which means it is out at room temperature for too long.

Here is the new cheese maker.

It comes complete with a small instruction manual, and a little recipe book. These are obviously translated from another language because at times the English is a little eccentric, but perfectly comprehensible!

It consists of a glass jar with a green plastic collar which screws on. Into this goes a very fine plastic mesh container, and a clear plastic lid to cover it. Just behind the plastic lid in the picture is a small rubber lid and a spring. These are for if you want to make firmer cheese.

To use it, you pour the kefir into the top, screw the lid on and put it in the fridge for about 24 hours, during which time the whey drips through into the glass jar, eventually leaving thick kefir “cheese” in the mesh container. You tip this out and can either eat the cheese as-is, or add flavourings.

To make harder cheese, once it is drained so that it is firm enough, you put the rubber lid on top, and then the spring, and then screw down the main lid which compresses the spring and forces the rubber lid down onto the cheese, squeezing out more whey.

The whey is extremely nutritious and can be used in many different recipes.

The cheese maker is very well made and quite substantial – a lot better than I thought it would be, so I don’t mind quite so much about the price! It is now in the fridge with the first batch draining.

The recipe book has recipes for all sorts of cheese, including some not made with kefir. You can even make coffee and tea in it, but I shan’t be doing that – apart from anything else, I don’t want the mesh container to get stained.

Fermented cucumbers

I bought two cucumbers yesterday, and today our neighbour came round with some of her home-grown ones, and I said I would ferment some for her.

In the photo you can see both sorts of Mason jars that I bought – one of the narrow-necked ones on the left, now filled with Himalayan pink rock salt. The wide-necked ones have the cucumbers in them, the one on the left being my neighbour’s home-grown cucumbers which are quite pale yellowy-green in colour, and the one on the right, the ordinary cucumbers that I bought. Both are in brine made with filtered water and the Himalayan rock salt, with dill and sliced garlic. In front of the jars you can see two of my glass discs. The fermented cucumber jars each have one in them. Lacto-fermentation is an anaerobic process and it’s important to keep the vegetables under the surface of the brine or they will go mouldy. These glass discs which fit the wide-necked Mason jars are ideal for this purpose, but you can use a ziplock bag part-filled with brine and with the air squeezed out to keep the vegetables submerged.

My cucumbers are now on the floor of the pantry, and they should be ready to sample in four or five days. I have to remember to burp the jars twice daily or they might explode. A couple of weeks ago I got a roll of black labelling material with a mat surface that you can write on with a chalk pen, for labelling my various ferments. I haven’t used it yet. I am hoping this will cut nicely on my cutting machine so I can cut my own fancy labels from it. This stuff is apparently peelable which will make life easier.

I recycle all the instant coffee jars that I buy for my hubby – these jars have nice glass lids with a rubber seal, that are designed to be recycled for other uses, and these are all on the shelves in my pantry. I designed labels for them on the computer and they look very pretty.

I think the black, semi-permanent ones will contrast nicely with these. The large Mason jars will have to go on the floor because all the shelves are full now!

Every evening I go into the kitchen and deal with what my hubby calls my “liquids” – said in a dark tone of voice which implies that they are something concocted in Dr. Frankenstein’s laboratory!! I suppose it’s all quite a bit of work, making fresh kefir every night, and sorting my rehydration drink for the next day, and burping my various jars so we don’t have major explosions, but I’ve got into a routine with it all now and it doesn’t seem too much hardship. I am loving the results, and I am feeling a lot better health-wise than I’ve felt for ages, apart from the possible return of my parastomal hernia (still waiting for a CT scan appointment to determine that), and  recent thrombophlebitis in my leg, which has now improved greatly, since going back on my rivaroxaban (anticoagulant).

The next thing I am going to experiment with is sauerkraut but I shall leave that for a week or two.

Tonight I began the next batch of sourdough which I shall make tomorrow.

WOYWW 456

Not a lot on my desk today because I cleared it last night. I can’t tell you why there’s a CD case on my desk today – it’s part of my mystery project, which, by the way, is coming on nicely.

I can show you a work in progress background for the mystery project.

The next picture is not part of the mystery project but a spin-off from it.

I’ve been experimenting a bit with my Distress Stains. I’ve got loads of them but rarely use them because I don’t like the delivery system – the dauber top gives a really streaky result. Some time ago I came across a tutorial on how to remove the dauber and transfer the contents into a spray bottle, and I’ve wanted to do this for ages. I think I will get more use out of them in this form. I put a couple of colours in spray bottles and eventually I think most of them will be transferred. The above samples were produced initially by cleaning off the stencil, and I added more ink pad and Distress Stains – not sure what I’m going to do with them yet. In real life they are quite shimmery, with the Delicata White Sparkle stamp (which is more silver than white) and the Antique Bronze Distress Stain.

A few days ago the new rack arrived for my craft boards. I wrote a post about it here. It’s lovely and substantial and works a treat.

Here it is in position. Already I am finding a huge difference, having the boards in the rack, and the partitioned box for all my bits and pieces.

It’s so cold again today! Whatever I do I can’t seem to get warm. We are getting most unusual snow in Torquay – we are more accustomed to mild weather which suits our palm trees! Here’s a view from the bedroom window earlier today.

Everyone goes on about the snow in such a negative way. I know all about falls and broken hips, and burst pipes, and traffic problems… but I can’t get over my childhood excitement at the sight of snow and how magical and beautiful it is.

The forecast says we’ll get most of the snow tomorrow, and then it should get warmer.

Kitties

On Sunday I was alone in the house and heard the most almighty bang, and thought a bomb had gone off in the street! Then I remembered the kittens were running around upstairs, so I went up to investigate. This is what I found in my hubby’s room.

It was a beautiful heavy glass bowl that had been given to him as a present by our old church in Plymouth when we left in 1999. I think it was Ruby. Lily was wandering around on the landing looking smug, as if to say, “It wasn’t me…” and then Ruby appeared, looking scared and guilty!! I told them both that I’d come closer than ever, today, to selling them on Ebay.

Here are a couple more videos.

On Sunday, the kittens were 9 months old! I can’t believe how fast the time has gone, and how big they now are.

A few days ago, we were a bit concerned about some new behaviour – they’ve had several spats, with growling and hissing, and Ruby arching her back and turning her tail into a bottle brush. My hubby thinks she’s trying to assert herself and become the boss cat. Up until now they’ve been nothing but loving with each other – two sweet little sisters who have always got on, so it’s a bit disturbing. Yesterday and today, however, they seem to be back to normal. I suppose it’s all part of growing up.

Health Update

I now have a date for my operation – Wednesday 28th March. I have to turn up at 7.30 a.m. – horrendously early! However, I’m not going to believe it’s actually happening until they pump the anaesthetic into my arm, going by their past record for postponements. I shan’t know until the day whether they will agree to give me a PICC line from the outset. If not, I shall insist on having one the moment the first cannula fails as I don’t want a repeat of what happened last year.

On the letter it tells me I will be in four nights. This is a standard letter for this sort of operation and doesn’t really mean much, as they will always judge each case individually, and given my previous experiences, it’s likely that I’ll take a bit longer to recover than the average, because of my ME. Also, like for the first operation in 2015, I shall be in over Easter, and this means that four nights on will take us to Sunday morning, which is Easter Sunday, followed by Easter Monday which is a bank holiday, and last time, the same thing applied, and there was nobody to discharge me until the Tuesday, when the pharmacy also re-opened, and they won’t send you home without your drugs. So I think I shall be in for a minimum of 6 nights.

My hubby is going back to the fracture clinic tomorrow. Hopefully they will tell him he can drive again. Yesterday the car went in for servicing and MOT, which means it should also be in tip-top condition for its return to the road, just like my hubby haha!

So we’ll have a few weeks of normality before I go into hospital. We are going to enjoy it while we can, and if the snow permits it.

Meantime, I am cracking on with my mystery project in the hope that it will be finished before my operation.

Studio Organisation - Rack for my Craft Boards

As part of the mini-re-organising of my desk, I have bought a rack to hold my various craft boards so that they are tidy, easily accessible, and take up less space. Up until now they have been in a heap, and the one I wanted was always at the bottom, of course. When I got my new scoring board, this was so large that it was not convenient to store it flat.

I found this rack on Amazon. It is metal, and quite substantial, and has three nice wide slots so it will hold a lot. It is really designed for kitchen chopping boards but I thought it would be ideal in my studio.

It has nice non-slip feet too.

Here it is in situ, with my boards in place. The photo was taken from the side. Above it, you can see the cup hook with my two heat guns hanging – another space-saving idea. The cables are a bit of a pain but there’s not a lot I can do about that.

There is room for the Cuttlebug in front, and I have also pushed the partitioned wooden box a bit further to the right, giving me a few more inches to play with on the desk.

In the rack, from back to front, I’ve got my new purple scoring board, a smaller Crafter’s Companion scoring board, my Tonic Stamping Platform, my envelope punch board, my paper trimmer and my ATC glue gun.

I think this is going to work really well.

I am thrilled with the partitioned box too – this is already paying dividends with everything within easy reach, instead of constantly falling off the shelf. I’ve taken the home-made ink blenders out of the ice cream box and put them in this box instead as they are in constant use.

The pull-out unit on the right is now freed up for cutting. I’ve also got some boxes of paper scraps on there at the moment but they aren’t a permanent fixture.

WOYWW 455 Reorganising my Desk

Last Thursday I went to the craft show in Exeter and had a truly wonderful time – a real treat after a pretty horrendous couple of months recently. You can read about the craft show here, and see all the fabby new stash I got to play with.

Since then, I’ve decided to have a clear-out in my studio and to reorganise my desk a bit, partly to make room for new things, and also because certain aspects of it have been rather frustrating. There’s a long way to go but at least I’ve made a start.

For this WOYWW, I’ve done a couple of annotated photos. The first one shows the normal view of my main work area. You can see that I’ve put my ironing pad over the top of my mystery project which is still literally under wraps! I’m progressing slowly with it – not so many opportunities this week, what with the craft show, and needing to recover for a couple of days afterwards.

On the brown shelf unit above the desk you can see my various carousels for frequently-used things. I used to have a lot of odd things on there as well – small bottles of glue, the odd rubber stamp, etc., and every time I revolved the carousels these things would fall off. When we cleared my parents’ house I rescued various things from Dad’s workshop and among them was the partitioned wooden box now on the right of the desk. It was filthy, but after I’d scrubbed it with hot soapy water and left it to dry, it was quite respectable, and it now contains these bits and pieces, close at hand and more tidily stored.

I also screwed a cup hook onto the side of the eye-level shelf unit above this, and have hung my two heat guns on there. This frees up desk space and keeps the cables tidier, but they are still easy to reach. The wooden shelf right at the top (just visible in the photo) usually has the box of embossing folders on it – currently on the desk because I’ve been using the Cuttlebug plates that also live in there, and I’ve also got rid of the CD storage box that used to be up there, which held some very old clear stamps, which are now filed away with the rest of the stamps on the rail. At the craft show I got quite a few new dies and now have too many to go in the original box which used to be on the shelf unit top-left in the photo, so I’ve now got them in a similar box to the embossing folders, and they will live side by side on the top shelf above the desk.

On the far right of the desk you can see my new purple scoring board that I bought at the show, stacked up with my other boards (envelope punch board, paper trimmer etc.). These used to be lying around flat, taking up space, and always the one I wanted was at the bottom of the heap! I have ordered a nice rack from Ebay, designed for storing chopping boards in the kitchen, and this will be used for storing these, making them easier to use and keeping things tidier.

This photo shows the pull-out unit to the right of the main work area, and shows things better organised now. The RUBs (Really Useful Boxes) with card scraps are only being used temporarily for this, in an attempt to keep things tidier and free up the unit for its original purpose as a cutting station. The boxes of ribbons used to sit on top of a plastic unit with 2 drawers that used to be where the Cuttlebug and wooden box now are – this unit, and the ribbons, were not in constant use. The unit is now stored on the top shelf above the desk, and the ribbons need to find another home.

The far side of my studio (sewing area) has been an absolute tip for months. I got a whole lot of knitting yarns out when I started knitting the socks before Christmas. This project went into abeyance when everything went pear-shaped with my hubby breaking his leg and Mum dying etc., and I need to finish that second sock, so that I can tidy up again! The mess is driving me nuts.

Another thing I’ve been doing this week while resting on the recliner is to go back through a lot of old posts on my blog, and replace the photos. For some time they were all linked to my Photobucket album, but when I had too many photos on there I had to subscribe to the pro version, and after a while I let that lapse, so the photos disappeared. I’ve still got a huge number of posts to work through, but again, at least I’ve made a start.

Even this small change in my desk organisation has made a huge difference – freeing up space, things more easily accessible, tidier and calmer environment! Let’s hope it lasts because I’m not the tidiest of workers!!

Now that’s sorted, I am hoping to crack on with the mystery project this week.

Kittens

What is it about kitties and boxes?

They are still enjoying chewing this little cardboard box. However much I sweep up, there are always bits of cardboard all over the carpet.

Today I managed to make a start on editing some of the kitten videos that have been mounting up for a while. Here are a couple to keep you going. More next week hopefully.

Ruby really enjoys walking around the back of this wooden chair. This was filmed on 1st January.

The two of them wrestling on top of the cat tree! I was scared they’d fall off. The whole thing rocks about and one day I think they are going to have it over, but fortunately the base is very heavy and it’s withstood their attentions so far! They have pulled off quite a bit of the fur, though, and it now has some bald patches. This one was filmed on 14th January.

Marbles in the Sunshine

Yesterday a friend came and spent the afternoon with me. She had just been to the House of Marbles and had treated herself to a small bag of marbles, really inexpensive, and so pretty! When I laid them out on the table, I was struck by how beautiful they were with the bright sunlight shining through them, and had to photograph them.

Here’s the full set.

Here are some of them, photographed individually. I was very intrigued by how the light is reflected on the opposite side of the marble from the light source, and how the colour and reflection shows in the shadow in each case.

A very pretty veined marble.

This one was clear blue glass, encrusted with glass fragments to create an interesting sparkly texture.

This one had been sand-blasted and had that gorgeous silky feel, like sea glass.

Laying the sand-blasted one in front of the clear red one, see how the colour is transferred from one to the other. An interesting shadow too, with an extra bright spot.

It would be interesting to try and draw these. I had a bit of practice drawing Zengems and this made me observe more closely how light behaves with transparent objects. Time to get the iPad Pro and Apple Pencil going again!

WOYWW 436 A Tidy Studio and Some Zentangles

At last I have tidied my studio! As always happens when I haven’t been using it, it had turned into a dumping ground and was an absolute mess.

This is the further side of the room.

On the left, by the lamp, is my little gallery area. In the corner is my sewing zone with my sewing machine, and the storage boxes on the shelves contain mostly textile stuff. On the right is my drawing zone.

This is the side of the room looking back towards the window.

On the left is my iMac. My cutting machine is across the corner. Misc. supplies in the storage boxes on the shelves. I’ve got all my distress inks and Infusions and Dylusions sprays and paints out (in the plastic boxes on top) so it’s not over-tidy at present! To the right is my main work area – my desk, for the purposes of WOYWW! The white unit in the foreground is one of several pull-out units. When stowed away, this one would go under the main desk but it never goes in there because that’s where I mostly sit. When pulled out, it provides an extra surface and still gives me access to the shelves – this one holds card and paper.

Here’s the desk itself.

Apart from being a bit tidier than before, not much change – you can still see the current work in progress – my Infusions mini-album.

I continue to alternate between being busy with various commitments, domestic tasks and looking after the kittens, and crashing out on the recliner suffering from extreme exhaustion! I am taking a bit of a dip with my ME at the moment which is a tremendous bore because it’s preventing me from getting much creative stuff done – this is always what gets pushed to the bottom of the heap when energy is in short supply! I am trying not to overdo things on better days – I run on adrenaline on busy days and then pay for it later. My internal clock has gone all haywire again so I’m not getting to bed till well into the small hours, and then struggle to get up in the mornings – normal ME fare!

Zentangle

I was getting so fed up with not being creative that I charged up my Apple Pencil and started drawing Zentangles on the iPad again. I can do this from the comfort of the recliner or in bed, and I can also flip back and forth to look at the step-outs for the various patterns, either in my own folder on the iPad, or online. I can also listen to audio books while I’m doing it! Multi-tasking…

Here’s my experiment with Diva Dance flowing through Paradox – I’ve always found the latter pattern problematic but think I’ve mastered it at last! Full details here.

Yesterday I completed another one, which had taken me several days to do. Full details here.

Kittens

Lily and Ruby are now 4 1/2 months old – I can’t believe how quickly the time is going, or how big they are getting! As my hubby says, they may be growing, but they are not growing up! Here they are in the kitty bed, suckling on the fluffy toy.

They won’t use the lovely new kitten bed I bought for them, and they are now getting too big for it! I got the old bigger bed out for them and they wouldn’t use that either, until my hubby put the fluffy thing in there, and now they go in to suckle, but sleep either on top of the wooden cat tree my hubby made, or in the kitty castle.

Lily pending…

(In my hubby’s pending tray in his office!)

Together on the scratching post, looking like two little meerkats on a train.

They are getting on quite well with the clicker training but both tend to have off days when they won’t concentrate! Also, when I try and put what they have learnt into practice in a situation where there are distractions that they find far more interesting, they behave as if they’ve never heard of clicker training! We persevere, though.

A couple of weeks ago they discovered what fun you can have for a minute or two with a new roll of loo paper.

The latest video of them, wrestling on the scratching post.

Health update

I got the result of my recent CT scan this week and the hernia has definitely returned. The emergency repair done in February when I was admitted for emergency surgery because of a blockage, has not even lasted a year. I knew it would fail eventually. I am seeing my surgeon again soon, according to his letter, and we will discuss options then. I really hope he agrees to admit me for elective surgery for a proper repair, and doesn’t wait for another blockage…

Walk-In Pantry–Complete!

This morning the electrician came to fit the light in my new pantry. After he had gone, I finished putting the food in, and added the things to the inside of the door, so the job is now complete.

Here’s another view, standing slightly further back.

Here is the new light. To the right of it you can see the sensor. This detects movement, and turns the light on, so it comes on when you open the door. If you don’t keep moving, the light goes off again. There’s something you can adjust on the sensor to set this time interval.

The light switched on. In the photo it looks very dark beneath the top shelf but in reality the light illuminates the entire space very adequately.

All my jars with their labels. I am more than delighted with how they look!

The marble slab. This feels lovely and cool. When I was growing up, my mum had a huge walk-in pantry with two vast slate slabs, and a ventilator window to one side. Every pantry should have a slab! My hubby and I chose this light colour, thinking that it would reflect the light and keep the interior of the pantry nice and bright. You can see I’ve got my water filter, the egg rack, some tomatoes and cherries, and the butter, keeping cool on the slab.

The spice rack on the right-hand side of the pantry.

Before replacing all the spices, I cleaned them all with a sponge and warm soapy water. When the spice rack was in the utility room, they got very dusty. The jars are now all in alphabetical order, making them easier to find. I have had to put the larger jars in the shelves at the bottom, and there are also some spare ones down there too. This rack was made for me many years ago when I got my first place, and it’s been with me on every move since. The top part of it has two rows of hooks for hanging utensils on, but I haven’t filled these yet. It will be good to free up a bit of space in the utensil jar beside the cooker, which is bursting at the moment – I will be hanging the ones I use less frequently on the spice rack, and now it’s in the pantry it is much more accessible.

Here is the left-hand side of the pantry. There are tins at the top, and the taller spaces are occupied by things in constant use.

The temporary arrangement under the bottom shelf.

I have taken one of the moveable shelves that I made from the top and put it under here for the moment – I can’t have it on the top shelf because if I do, there isn’t room for the really tall jars of pasta etc. The right-hand side of this space under the bottom shelf will eventually be occupied by the wine rack, which will be reduced in size to fit, but in the meantime it will be used by the new kittens as a climbing frame! Two previous generations of kittens have used it and they have all absolutely loved it.

Underneath this moveable shelf I’ve got a couple of plastic baskets with miscellaneous things in – these will occupy better places once we start munching our way through the huge number of duplicates found when I sorted out that horrible old cupboard!

Inside the door.

This afternoon I put the finishing touches to the pantry by fixing the three metal mesh magazine racks to the inside of the door, for storing my rolls of paper etc. The top one holds greaseproof paper, baking parchment and foil – packets which are open and in current use. The middle one holds the centres of rolls of kitchen paper. Each one holds different sizes of freezer bags, and I’ve written on the top of each roll what it contains, e.g. “LH,” “M,” “S” – “Large with Handles,” “Medium” (without handles), “Small” etc. This was a storage tip I picked up years ago and it’s brilliant for keeping your freezer bags organised and tidy. Unless the bags have been used for meat, I wash them and re-use them. I used to keep these rolls in one of those red plastic baskets, but this way, they take up much less room. The bottom rack holds unopened rolls of baking parchment, cling film etc. To the right is a hook on which I have hung my apron. All this stows away tidily when the door is closed.

I thought long and hard how best to attach these racks to the door. I got this idea from Pinterest, and it seems that most people attach them with Velcro, but I didn’t want to do this. Because the racks are so thin fore-and-aft, there was no room to insert a screwdriver to screw them to the door. I drilled holes in the door where I wanted the fixings to go, and wrapped a cable twist around each screw, which I then screwed into the door. I marked the positions of the screws on each rack with a thread tied through the metal mesh, and lined these markers up with the screws, threading the cable twists through the mesh, and twisting them together to secure the racks in place. It was an awfully fiddly job but it works a treat! The racks had to be placed with plenty of space above them, in order to be able to get the paper rolls out.

The rest of the kitchen is still somewhat chaotic. Now that lots of things have migrated into the pantry, I’ve got the chance to free up space in the rest of the kitchen and get things organised better, which will mean having fewer things out on the tops, and the whole thing will be a lot tidier, and easier to keep clean. Positives all round!

Finally, a review of the journey from chaos to order, with some pretty horrendous stuff in between (dry rot!).

What the space originally looked like. When we moved, I had asked the kitchen fitters to leave this cupboard as it was part of the character of the old house, but this proved to be a mistake because it was a complete pain to use.

You can see from this photo of the top half that it was absolutely full of stuff, but what I wanted always seemed to be at the back, and I had to take everything out all the time. My hubby put the intermediate shelves in for me which helped a bit, but the whole thing was absolutely awful and it made me tear my hair with frustration on a daily basis! I used to dream of a walk-in pantry but couldn’t envisage how it might work.

The bottom half of the cupboard, cleared, and with the old heavy duty sheet of lino on the floor removed, revealing the dry rot underneath.

What a total nightmare!

It turned out that the rot had only invaded two short joists, and once these, and the rotten floor boards above had been removed, it was just a case of replacing what was lost. In order to do this, the whole of the old cupboard had to be taken out.

During the time the work was done, we decamped into Mum’s tiny kitchen in the flat. It did us fine! How fortunate we are to have access to two kitchens! (You can see how long ago this all was – there are primroses growing on the bank outside!)

The old cupboard and rotten timber removed.

New joists going in.

New rendering on the walls after the old had been hacked off – they had to remove quite a lot of material to make sure the dry rot hadn’t tracked up into the wall.

New floor boards.

The repairs completed, waiting for decoration and the construction of the new pantry.

The old defunct ventilator blocked off, and a new one installed.

New flooring.

The frame of the new pantry being constructed.

New shelves installed. When this work was finished, I applied several coats of linseed oil to seal and protect them, and finished them off with a coat of beeswax polish.

The door with the side panel made from spare laminate floor pieces. The cornice from the side of the double oven unit has been put along the top to complete the finish.

Making additional free-standing shelves.

The additional shelves completed, and waiting for the slab to arrive.

My beautiful new pantry all fitted out and filled with food and lit up!

I am beyond thrilled with it. It probably sounds silly but to have a walk-in pantry like this is a dream come true for me. I am going to enjoy my cooking so much more now.

The whole project has been finished in time for the arrival of our new kittens on Thursday. This is a fresh start in so many ways!