My Beautiful Country (in the city) Kitchen

Can We Have Some, Mummy?

I got everything I wanted in a kitchen. We wanted to duplicate the kitchen we had in our old house, because we knew that design worked. But this time we wanted to add a peninsula/ eating bar to the kitchen. We wanted to keep the cost down, so hubby built me a utility (pans) cupboard, as well as a large pantry.

Early Days - Not Quite Settled In

As well as these I had the cabinet makers make me a beautiful big peninsula/eating bar in the kitchen. It is 7.5 feet long and comes off the end of the cabinets. This is where the kids will eat breakfast and lunch. This gives me the luxury of eating dinner in the dining room and being able to set the table after dinner and find it set for the next dinner. No more doing schoolwork/puzzles/lunch all on the same table.

Kitchen End

The area under the eating bar will be a rock face when we get around to it.

School Room Side

In my schoolroom I wanted room for lots of bookshelves, a couch, chair, plus a nice big closet for all the crafts and games. We have not yet got all the closet doors up, so you can see the mess in them all.

With all the baking I do I decided to buy an oven that could cook three trays of cookies at a time. Most people bake a couple/few dozen cookies at at go. I don't. When we bake cookies at our house it is 6-9 dozen at a time! So an oven that cooks more at a time is great. When the oven came I was surprised to see all the other bells and whistles on it! I am sure I will never use them all, but it is neat to see what it can do!

Nice, Easy To Clean Top

As well as this I needed more fridge space with these growing boys! I have one that has gone over 6' already and seems to have very hollow legs and arms! Soon the others will catch up. So we bought two fridges. One was a nicer model with the freezer at the bottom. I am tired of bending over (in my old age *grin*) and losing all those veggies in the drawer that I don't see. They always end up moldy. So I figured that was a good defense for the fridge on top part. *smile*

Fridges and Stoves Arriving

The Last Days of Construction...

The days before the 18th of December were absolutely crazy days!! We were working about 30 man hours a day between hubby and me!!! The first shift would arrive about 6:30 in the morning and the last person would leave around 2-3:30 in the morning!! We got a huge amount done in a small amount of time!

We had our son building bathroom cabinets, (as well as every other job possible), hubby climbing up on bannister rails to paint edging around fireplace pipes,

More Restful Than Drywalling!

Balancing 20 feet up in the air, on a 4" ledge!

Here he is painting the edging around the stairwell. This was very tall and dangerous. He was balanced across the bannisters! Not something that I was willing to do. Note the dust on the camera.

He also had the fun of speckling the ceiling. The very last area he did was our walk in closet. It was late.... and dark.... and now we have a furry walk in closet!! LOL! The walls are rather speckled. Ray tells me... that people actually speckle their walls. I'll believe him. *grin*

Meanwhile, I was painting, painting and painting some more.

Painting the Hall

Balancing Over the Stairs.... Scary!

The Little Boys' Transportation Room

The Master Bedroom

Main Babysitter

Plus of course we had the little troops always on hand. As the house became more liveable and not so dangerous we had the baby and his babysitter hanging out with us more.

And as he was with us we could then put our nine year old to work. He was good at vacuuming and packing and cleaning up the garbage that we were constantly generating.

Garbage Man

There was still lots to do as the painting came to an end. I had doors to stain and paint, and then lots and lots of window trim and baseboard!

The End Result

As I was cleaning the house in the last few days before we moved in I was continually thinking, "Whose house is this??" Because the last house we built was child friendly and practical. This house is classy with wood floors, doors, trim and new classy furniture. It is such a blessing!

Towards the last few days we had no time to go home and cook dinner so we began to order pizza at the house. The funny thing is when we lived out in the bush we could not get cell phone access, so we figured it would not be a problem here in town.

Well, we were wrong!!! There are only a few places in our house where the phone will work. One of them being out one of the bedroom windows. You should have seen us... Colt was trying to get the phone to ring outside and lean out to talk to these people at the other end... We were desperate for food and couldn't quit and go home! Well, we finally got the food. But not before we busted a gut laughing over our antics. *laugh*

Enjoying a Late Night Pizza Party

Bright, FUN TV room

Our kids don't watch a lot of tv. Between learning, reading and outdoor play there just doesn't seem to be enough time to spare any for tv. But given where we live - snow snow snow - there are times when the tv is used as a tool!

People seem to hide their tv in the dingy basement, but I wanted to be different. I decided to make our tv room a fun, bright room. So I painted one wall a vibrant lime green and the other three walls were a very soft shade of the same colour.

I then bought these very cool lights. They are called Medusa lights. They each come with six necks and have a lamp on the end of each one. The lamps are red, blue, turquoise, green, yellow, pink - the kind of colours each of our kids has to signify which child it is - ie: One boy is yellow and when we find a yellow towel lying around we know who the culprit is!

I found a wonderful 2 foot wide clock to hang on one of the walls.

Then I had to order this so cool, tv shaped mirror for the wall. It has a orange neon light behind it, so when the light is on it shines orange. Very cool!!

Then of course since our kids colours are what this room is coloured in I have ordered bean bags to match their colours!

They love to lounge in them and the baby gets propped up on top of the tower like a little king.

King of our Castle

The Fun Room