Kitchens and Beasts from beyond

Well, my kitchen renovations started last Thursday.

This first pic is what it looked like immediately before I moved the stove, fridge and all the other stuff. The second picture, is just another view. Notice how there's no ovrehead cupboard space.... Also in the second picture, notice the tiling, the guy has changed the pattern where the kitchen part starts... I don't know why, but he did. Not shown is a hill in the floor which is painfully obvious when you enter the kitchen.

Not pretty.

So we begin Thursday by going to the power tool place and picking up the kenga hammer. First impression: Bloody heavy. And once I got it home and begun using it, I proved that first impressions are often correct. The thing weighed but 30-35 kg! And I am a man of not many muscles so I struggled from about 9:30 - 11:00 am getting very little done and sweating heaps. I also dug some pretty impressive holes through the chip board floor.

A sad beginning.

Ross (father-in-law) got to my house around 11 or so... coffee break. The hammer was so loud (I wore ear-muffs and eye goggles) I didn't hear him come in, use the bathroom, flush the toilet, and watch me for a few minutes. He used the hammer for a much larger portion of the time then I did, him being significantly bigger than me. But he complained of the hammer's wieght too..

It was kind of funny when I looked up once and saw the hammer's blade dissapear into the floor and stay there though. But this was only one of many holes to go through the floor. Once the hammer went through the floor though, I had to go around it with a hammer and chisel to dig the tiles away around it so that the hammer wouldn't go through the floor anymore.

It was a very hard day.

But at the end of it, this is what we had finished, probably just under half the tiles up. This is a pic of Alex next to my enemy. Doesn't look that big, but it felt like the whole thing was made of lead. Me and Ross ended the day on something like 5 minute shifts on it because we couldn't do any longer.

Friday: Woke up early and sore at 6:30ish am, called the hire shop to see if they had any smaller hammers (this one was a medium). They didn't, so I was sad.

Then I tried a different hire place, and they said yes they had a smaller one, so I was happy. So I went down, had a look, and rented 2 of them!!!

When I got home, Ross was pretty happy that we didn't have to deal with the big bugger again. This smaller hammer proves that bigger is not always better (Bec!!!). It ripped through the tiles much better than the beast from hell, and put way fewer holes in the floor. We were still buggered by the end of the day though, but the tiles were up, and we were able to begin prepping the floor for tiling. Yay!!!

Here's a picture of a champion of the world with a great little hammer and the last remaining tiles. Notice the pile of tile shrapnel in front of me.... I taught them a lesson they won't soon forget I tell you...

Well I can't put any more pictures into this post, so I guess that's all I'll wright about this.... No, I'll just post another one up soon.... But I got the tiles up Friday, and today's Tuesday, and I am not entirely finished... So it was hard.

Until later my loyal fans...