Kitchen Makeover: Day 9

2 February 2010 (Tuesday)
Day 9

Day 8 into my kitchen makeover and thank God, today there's less drilling and hacking. Probably they're working on some other work, although half the floor is still not hacked nor drilled. Whatever, I'm glad for the reprieve.

And I've also completed translating my Digital Marketing Book, a project I've been working on, in fact, have been breathing and living DM since end of November 2009. Imagine, everyday, having your eyes glued to a 360-page book, and poring through dictionaries, thesaurus, glossaries and terms relating to digital marketing and internet for almost 3 months.

I'm now into the editing phase, and hopefully in a couple of days' time can start the proofreading stage, before I'm done with this exhausting and tiring project. My target is to complete this book well ahead of my deadline, i.e 25 February 2010.

Meanwhile, now that the translation part is done, I can relax somewhat as the translation bit is the most tedious and laborious part. I have hardly done anything else during this period, no TV, no nothing, except translating and the occasional facebooking and blogging (thank God I could still indulge in these two passion).

For the past 70 days, I've been profoundly intertwined with Terms like Web 2.0, simulcast, spider, SEO, SERP, link, embedded format, etc.

And I have also delved intimately into the thoughts of the two authors Damian Ryan, and Calvin Jones. And I think I've had enough of them.

I'm looking forward to resuming my literary and far more intimate relationship with Sophie Kinsella, Nora Roberts, Sue Townsend, Melissa Hill, John Grisham, Jeffrey Archer, and the likes of them. I've missed their intriguing plots and twists, and most of all I've missed the sheer pleasure of reading.
 
By the time I'm done with all the phases, I hope my kitchen makeover will be completed too. And, pleased as I may be, it'll be a mega headache for me as I've to look into cleaning up the HUGE mess in my entire house. Looks like Sophie, and Nora, and John, and Jeffrey will have to wait for a couple more weeks before I can caress them again.

As I'm in a celebratory mood today because I've completed Phase 1, I gave myself a treat by catching a 2-hr movie on ASTRO Max, "Safe Harbour", a touching and moving love story, about two grieving souls who found each other on a fog-shrouded California beach, but as their passion grew, the darkness of their past threatened to destroy their love. That was a truly blissful break, a solid 2-hr break since I started on this translation project.

And right after the movie, I went down to check on the progress of my kitchen makeover. It aws a huge relief to discover that they've completed hacking the old floor tiles, so I reckoned they'll be ready to cement and retile both the walls and floor within the next couple of days. I couldn't wait to see my kitchen taking its new shape soon.

Kitchen Makeover: Day 8

1 February 2010 (Monday)
Day 8

After one day of break, work in my kitchen resumed today. The drilling and hacking on the wall really drive me up the wall (my bedroom wall!!!). Given that I'm at home, I have no choice but to put up with the din.

The racket stopped during their lunch break and right after lunch the ggrrrr...drrrrrr..... brrrrr zound resumed!!! I can't wait for all these to be over.

And with all the grrrrrrrrrrrrr, brrrrrrrrrrrrrr, drrrrrrrrrrrrrr, drrrrrrrrrr sound done for the day, I went down after the workers left to survey the progress and here's the output from the racket they made today.

Kitchen Makeover: Day 6

30 January 2010 (Saturday)
Day 6

Time flies and today is already Day 6 in my kitchen make-over. As my husband is only free during the weekend, we had to leave the workers this morning to go out and buy lightings and fan for the kitchen.

Today, they completed cementing the wet area, whilst the electrician came to do the wiring for all the electrical points.

Looks like they've not made much inroad on the dry area yet as they wanted to complete the wet area first. And tomorrow, Sunday, the workers take a much-needed break.

And it's gonna be a break too not only for me and my family, but the neighbours too from all the din and the noise. Too bad they would still  have to put up with all the racket for at least another week.

Pics from Day 6

 

Kitchen Makeover: Day 5

29 January 2010 (Friday)
Day 5

Today it's Day 5, and I hope work on my kitchen make-over will pick up pace quickly. Now that the cabinets had been dismantled, I presumed they would start tiling the walls and the floor. And true enough, once the workers came, they started drilling the old wall and floor tiles to make way for the new ones.

And boy! the drilling sound just drove me up the wall, not the kitchen wall, though!!! Ohhh my... I could just go bonkers. And who says, being "Site Supervisor" is easy!!! You'd have to put up with not only the dust that's flying around the house, but the noise too.

And as hunger crept in my poor tummy, I boiled water in my bedroom to make a cup of "sumptous" and Extra delicious Laksa Singapura. Hahhh....that's another plus point of being a Site Supervisor. I get to enjoy a cup of Laksa Singapura right from the comfort of my bedroom while working.....

Later in the evening when I went down to check on the make-over progress, I realised that they hadn't started hacking and drilling the walls and floor in the dry kitchen area. All the din and noise actually came from the wet area. Oh boy!!! And I thought the racket from the kitchen was over. How wrong I was!!!

Pics from Day 5

Kitchen Makeover: Day 4

28 January 2010 (Thursday)

Day 4

If I had thought that the MESS would ease up on Day 4, Boy! Was I wrong!!. The mess got messier now that the contractors had dismantled my cabinets to enable the walls and floors to be retiled.

It's really funny that when we first started on the idea of redoing the kitchen, it was because of 2 utmost reasons: 1/ to enlarge the kitchen somewhat as my current kitchen is narrow and small. 2/ to leave no room for any RODENTS to infiltrate my kitchen ever again as the previous layout and design had given them a field day making my kitchen (in particular the backyard area) their home.

And the initial plan was just to break down the wall separating my dry kitchen with the backyard (I was thankful for this wall) as we had managed to stave away the pesky rodents from infiltrating our dry kitchen as well. And there wasn't any plans at all to redo the wall tiles nor the floor tiles. We were just planning to tile the backyard with similar tiles like the ones in the dry kitchen area. And just tile the walls with white tiles so as not to worry about painting them again in time to come.

But after discussing with Jali, we soon realised that it was virtually impossible to get similar designs for both the floor and wall tiles as those designs are easily more than 20 years old and have long been outdated.

So my husband and I deliberated and decided to change the entire tiles in the dry kitchen to match with the ones in the wet area. And because of this turn of event, the contractors had to dismantle the cabinet to lay the tiles on the wall.

And I reached a crossroad in my kitchen makeover decision. Should I, or should I not retain my top kitchen cabinet which had served me well all these years. Afterall, it's still in fairly good condition. However, it'll not jive at all with my new kitchen concept.  The 'seasoned' and weary look will stick out like a sore thumb and would look out of place. I likened it to having a 90's top with a 'vogue' bottom.

After some deliberation again with my husband, we decided to redo the top cabinet as well to ensure the look and feel is strreamlined with our new kitchen concept. And that's another new thing we added to our kitchen makeover that wasn't in our original plan (the first being the tiles in the dry kitchen).

The workers had left for the day and as I went down to survey the progress, BOY!!! The whole house is really a HUGE MESS. If the last couple of days, it looked like the earthquake had hit us, today, it looked as though the tsunami and earthquake had rolled into one and had hit our entire house. Gosh!!! I wish I could just run away from my messy house and hide somewhere....

Pics from Day 4