English Rose Kitchen

We’re just about ready to rock with the kitchen renovation, so, partly in light of the credit crunch, we decided to review where we are financially.

We started by taking a good, long look at what was being taken out of our bank account every month by direct debits to see if we could make any savings there and the results were astounding! To save repeating myself, you can click on how to survive the credit crunch to read about it.

It’s either a story of future hope, or a sad tale of past folly. Suffice to say that the saving every year is enough for a good holiday, or at least to keep us out of the red.

A possible fate for Ray’s shoes

What’s going on in the ERK household?
Well I’ll level with you. I’ve been so darned busy recently with Rotten Hill Gang (a post on my other blog that includes nice pics from a stage at Notting Hill Carnival) that I haven’t had a moment to call my own so I’ve had no time to write . Which is pretty lucky really because nothing much has happened here.

Another scenario for the fate of Ray’s shoes

So why all the excitement now?
Well for some time now we’re been sleeping in the living room awaiting the finishing touches on the bedroom. This has had the interesting effect that Ray’s shoes, which are normally piled up all over the bedroom floor have, for the past few months, been piled up all over the kitchen and dining area. My recollection of what our beautiful old, solid wood dining table looks like is dim and walking from the living room (also currently full of items more normally associated with a bedroom) to the one working bathroom means traversing an assault course of footwear, bags, the holes in the floor, more footwear, some books and a box of records. There is barely room to plant a foot for each step required.

A third possible outcome for Ray’s shoes

So why all the excitement NOW?
Are yes that. Well from my position in the office I can hear all sorts of banging, wheezing, grunting and the odd bit of swearing coming from the bedroom. No, there isn’t a geriatric porn movie in production, it’s Ray finally finishing the painting of our new fitted wardrobes. She just called me in there to look and it’s beeyootiful!

Woohoo!!
Woohoo indeed. The mattress on the poor sofa in the living room cannae take any more Captain! Nor can our backs. All that remains now is to get the wonderful Farouk to weld part of our bed (the bed is a work of art that deserves a separate article and shall have one) back together and we can move in, disappear the shoes into the wardrobe (in my dreams I suspect) and press on with the kitchen. Woohoo!

When Madonna appeared on Jonathan Ross¹ in one of the best interviews I’ve seen him do, she was trying to prove her credentials as a born again Brit by claming that she liked nothing more than to while away a few pleasant hours in a lovely old English pub². Thinking he was calling her bluff. He asked her what her favourite bitter³ was. “I’m quite partial to a pint of Timothy Taylor” came the reply. Wossy⁴ thought she had just made something up to save face, but the next day a newspaper found out that Timothy Taylor did indeed exist and was made by a small brewery in West Yorkshire. Subsequently a few pubs here in the South East have started to stock it and I’ve found that I have something in common with Mrs Richie, I like the stuff too.

This evening Ray and I must have been having some kind of argument (we can’t remember, the Timmy Taylor has kicked in in between) because she ran off round to the North Pole, one of our locals. The argument (and remember we’re not really sure if there was one) can’t have been that serious because she called 5 minutes later to tell me that the North Pole now sells TT.

Ray is gregarious almost to a fault. When I arrived at the pub she was already entertaining one of the locals, Dave, who in turn was entertaining her with a virtuosic display of cockney rhyming slang⁵. Now strictly speaking, because I was born within the sound of the Bow Bells, I’m a cockney, but my parents hammered out any trace of a local dialect when I was young by sending me to elocution lessons. That’s right, I’m a Londoner born and bred, but I cannot do a London accent! Nonetheless I managed to teach him “It’s all gone Pete Tong”⁶.

Dave, it turns out, is a builder/decorator who works with other builders/decorators on rather high end projects some as the National Galery and Very Rich People’s Homes. He explained to us (in ever shortening loops, the more he had to drink) that he’s “not cheap, but we’ll give you the date that we’ll turn up and we’ll be there on that day. We’ll give you a schedule and we’ll stick to it and we’ll give you a quote and that’s the price you’ll pay”. For some reason we believe him, so we explain what it is that we’re trying to do and arrange to have him round to take a look. He did, after all, paint a large mural at the end of a cul-de-sac just near the North Pole.

Notes for non UK readers

¹ Jonathon Ross is a popular TV presenter with his own chat show, known for being hilarious and making his interviewees look good at the same time.
² I can confirm that this is (sort of) true. When she and Guy were living in Holland Park, she apparently used to frequent a pub called the Windsor Castle, notable for two VERY low doorways (one is about 4 feet high). A friend of mine was in there once and noticed her in the corner. When she got up to leave about half the pub got up with her, because they were all her security guards.
³ Bitter is what the rest of the world thinks of as “warm, flat beer”. An acquired taste usually guaranteed to turn the stomachs of non Brits, along with Marmite. Strangely Ray has acquired it since she’s been here.
⁴ Mr Ross makes a feature of the fact that he can’t pronounce his “R”s. A musician friend of mine is terrified of being interviewed by him because he goes out under the name “Ranking Roger”.
⁵ Cockney slang involves finding a (usually 2 or 3 word) phrase whose last word rhymes with the word you actually want to say, then sometimes only saying the first word of the phrase. So “look” becomes “butcher’s hook”, which is usually reduced to “butcher’s”, as in “Let’s ‘ave a butcher’s”.
⁶ Pete Tong is a DJ specialising in dance music and his name, when used in the phrase “It’s all gone Pete Tong”, means “wrong”. It’s very modern slang, probably only about 10 years old, so it might not count.
⁷ (Yes I know there isn’t really a ⁷, this is completely gratuitous). Isn’t it amazing how quickly the singer James Blunt’s name became rhyming slang?

What were all those non English Rose Kitchen posts doing here anyway?
OK It’s finally happened. From the word go Ray was nagging me not to post non kitchen renovation articles to this blog. “If you must stray from the subject, at least make it related!” she’d say. “Bathrooms, fine. Interior design and home renovation in general, also fine!”. I toyed sheepishly with my mouse as she said “But why on Earth do you think you ought to post items about your band, about Notting Hill or about Timothy bloody Taylor beer to a site about our home?”.

And she had a point. Well – not the “Timothy bloody Taylor” bit actually, I made that up. she’s American, so if she said that it would have sounded something like Liza Doolittle, but that was the gist of it.

The trouble is I like writing
I like the sound of my own typing too much. And so Notting Hill Diary was born. The site is about our neighbourhood. It’s growing all the usual stuff about the history Notting Hill, Notting Hill Carnival, bars, pubs, restaurants and cinemas in the area. But I’m also I’m trying to keep it topical and entertaining with interesting articles you won’t find on one of those sites that’s little more than a glorified RSS agregator.

And I’ve sent all the offending articles over to their new home. I’ve enjoyed having them here, but we all know that it’s for the best that they reside in a more relevant location. Fairwell irrelevant tittle tattle that I can’t help writing. We’ve enjoyed entertaining you, but now it’s time to get serious about kitchens once again. We’re nearly back sleeping in our bedroom (we’ve been sleeping in the living room for what seems live forever), which means that we’re about to take the Great Leap Forward as far as our English Rose Kitchens plans go.

Footnote: OK I’ve finally removed all the non kitchen related articles to http://www.nottinghilldiary.com. It’s sad to see them go, but they’ve found a better home there.

I’ve now installed the DoFollow plugin to this blog so that anytime you add a comment any link to your own site will actually count for something in Google’s eyes. I’ve already explained why that is on my other blog in the article Notting Hill Diary now a nofollow free zone so I won’t bore you with the details again here.

Remember how gutted we were to have to sell our gorgeous Smeg FAB28? I guess we still miss it in all its retro glory, but we knew inside that our storage requirements greater than it could offer.

It turns out that that we couldn’t be happier with its replacement, the glorious Electrolux American Fridge Freezer ENL62981XX3. Despite the issue of the exterior being far from the “excellent condition” described in the eBay auction, it works perfectly and it’s a revelation to be able to see and access its entire contents without resorting to Pilates style contortions. Also far less food is getting wasted due to either disappearing to the nether regions or getting frozen to the rear wall. Fridge burn is a thing of the past.

The freezer half of it too is a joy to use. Being able to see every item clearly is  a real advantage. The tendancy with our old box of a freezer was to put things in unmarked plastic boxes, stack them in one of the four compartments and … periodically wonder what they were.

It’s amazing how you can live somewhere for years pondering over a problem and then one day the bleedin’ obvious hits you in the face. Yesterday we realised that the new fridge was never going to fit through the door between the living room and kitchen, at least, not without taking the doors off and struggling (which is wha we did).

The problem we’ve been facing is that despite the fact that our kitchen/dining area is pretty big, there’s not a lot of usable wall space because of the positioning of doors, radiators and a cute wooden supporting structure that’s used to divide the space into three pokey little rooms. when we realised there would be a problem moving the fridge into the kitchen we thought “Why not swap the kitchen and lounge?!”. What is now the lounge has far more usable wall space and would allow for a centre island and still have room for a dining area at the end where the stage is¹.

¹Don’t get excited, it’s only about 6 inches high and 8 feet across and the only performance that has ever taken place there was about seven years ago by a Norwegian poet friend of mine, Øystein Wingaard Wolf. We call him Ø for short.

It was with great regret yesterday that we said our final goodbyes to our beloved Smeg FAB28. We had one false start when the original winner of the auction unavoidably had to pull out through no fault of their own, but we were at least happy when the next highest bidder accepted it and turned out to be a lovely couple who’ve been married six weeks and moved into their new house a week ago to the day. We made them promise it was going to a good home and delivered it ourselves. It looks good there and we are tempted to go back an wave at it from time to time.

Bye Bye Smeg. It hasn’t always been easy living with you, what with your temperamental innards and your freezer door that broke, twice, but ultimately it’s been a rewarding relationship and we’re very sad to have to let you go.

When we got back home we realised that the Electrolux American Style Sherman Tank of a Fridge Freezer won’t fit through the door from the living room (where it currently resides) to the kitchen without taking its doors off first and even then we’re not quite sure. That said, our old (so sad to use that term already!) Smeg didn’t actually fit in the intended space in its new kitchen either

Bladders full to bursting we set off on the 15 or so miles to meet Mr Poole, or “Michael” as I’ll call him. 20 or so minutes later our satnav directed us towards some concrete bollards that cut his road in two and another 10 minutes later we arrived at Michael’s house.

The stark contrast between his welcome and the reception we’d found in Brockenhurst threw us momentarily. He took us through to his kitchen and we saw, for the first time, some restored and installed units.

In fact he had installed runs top and bottom along both sides and one end of his kitchen before getting completely carried away and using some of the units he’d intended to sell on along two walls of his dining area. Ray and I thought that that part was probably overkill, lending itself to the effect of standing in a show room, but that’s just a taste thing and you’d be hard pressed to fault Michael’s skill and enthusiasm.

He was full of useful advice and told us the processes he’d used to restore the units. I was planning to document them, but before I had a chance he posted a comment to say how here: Restoring English Rose Kitchen Units, Michael’s way .

In his garage was another restoration project of his, a beautiful 1937 Ford Club Coupé. Michael is sort of like Al. Only – er …

Michael’s Ford Club Coupé

He took us to a lock up garage he has about 15 minutes away to pick up the units. A double sink atop four base units, two full size wall units and  two half size units, plus a larder, a couple of end shelves and, as every self respecting seller on of English Rose kitchens has, a surpising amount of unidentifiable bits. We unscrewed the bottom run into two lots of two units and he knowledgeably guided us round them. He explained that some parts, particularly the backs, are steel rather than aluminium, which is good to know and now I understand why those are the parts that get rusty.

Mercedes Sprinter splitter vans are huge, but when configured for a band, there’s very little space inside for other stuff. We managed though and Michael thoughtfully provided carboard, a piece of underlay and some rope to help lash it all together.

We did plan to drive the lot of it back to my parents’ garage that night, but that would have meant clanging large pieces of metal around at about midnight in what is a very quiet area. That’s not a good look, so we drove it home (I did the best parallel parking job of my life in the thing!) and waited till the next day. Luckily Ed was on hand to help lift the fridge down from the van and then later to just inside our French doors, where it will remain till the Smeg sells (it’s coming up tomorrow and is currently an absolute bargain at £75).

Yesterday was the big run to pick up the American Style Fridge Freezer from slighty-angry-woman in Brockenhust and English Rose Kitchen units lot 3 from Mr Poole in Poole. Brockenhurst is in the depths of the beautiful New Forest down near the South Coast and conveniently only about 20 miles from Poole.

I got to Tiger Tours and picked up the van around 2pm. There was a problem with the van that they were gong to give me, so they gave me another, which was not one of their own, but rather funky nontheless.

We made it down to Brockenhurst for about 5:15pm. One of the wonderful things about running around the country acquiring bits and pieces is that you get to meet so many different people and get a 20 minute snapshot of their lives. Most of the people we meet in this way are incredibly warm and friendly and it can be a very rewarding experience.

Not so on this occasion. We were greeted by slightly-angry-woman’s slightly-interesting-husband, who showed us the fridge. To be honest out of the two of them the fridge had more personality, although their eBay description of it as being in “Excellent condition” turned out to be far fetched at best. Actually it’s only a side that you won’t see when it’s installed that has some scratches and dents so we didn’t make the fuss that we probably should.

It took the three of us, with the assistance of a slightly-interesting-neighbour, to lift the beast into the cargo compartment where we wedged it at an angle to stop it rattling about. We were desparate to empty our bladders, but as soon as the fridge was in the van I think it’s fair to say that they couldn’t get rid of us fast enough.

The nicest thing about that experience was the appearance of a family of wild ponies¹ outside their house, which unfortunately had wandered off by the time I got my phone out to take a picture, so here are a couple of pictures of what they would have looked like. Believe me, they’re more interesting than the sellers of the fridge².

¹ The New Forest in Hampshire near the souh coast is famous for a) being quite beautiful and b) being home to some 3,000 wild ponies
² Interestingly, when I first posted this article, several the Google ads that it displayed were to do with marriage guidance counselling and divorce lawyers. Maybe Google really does have special insight into all of our lives!