Getting abreast of things

In preparation for the builders' arrival, we cleared everything movable out of the kitchen on the evening of July 8th, except for the cooker. Amazing how big a room it is when there's nothing in it!

The following day, we closed all possible doors to prevent egress of the inevitable dirt, dust and soot, and left them to it. After several hours of grinding and banging noises, and a couple of very worrying sounds of falling masonry, we were greeted with a beautifully remodelled kitchen:

The height of the hob space in the chimney breast has been raised to 1900mm and a new lintel installed, hearth tiles chiselled off and the entire structure of the largest cupboard removed including all the redundant central heating pipework from the old boiler. As you can see, things are looking a bit "industrial."

It's going to get worse before it gets better. I have the last remaining cupboard to strip out myself before the electricians come to do the first fix. In my naive way, I had hoped that the tradespeople could be scheduled to visit one after the other in quick succession, and immediately preceding the kitchen fit-out. No such luck. The builders first available date - 9 July - precedes the manufacture of the new kitchen units by a full 8 weeks, so we'll be camping out in the dining room until September, while the kitchen degrades even further towards a building site.