First a floor, then a sink

Yes, the floor is completely installed, as well as the new sink! There is still some trim and finishing work to do around the floor, covering the join with the hard tiles in front of the woodburner, baseboards, etc. But the worst of the mess is over and we're walking softly on cork tiles now.

Both of us feel like midgets standing in front of the new sink counter. The brown ceramic sink and counter had been "lowered" by 10cm (4") when concrete was poured around the supports for the tile floor (the one we both disliked). This sink was already in bad shape when we bought the house, so you can imagine what kind of shape it was in after five years of us living here. Ed took great pleasure in breaking it into pieces for its trip to the dump. The new sink and counter are stainless steel, with a slight honeycomb pattern. We had wanted a faucet mounted on the wall like we had in Amstelveen but discovered that once the counter was raised there wouldn't be enough space for it, so we got this nice high-arched thing instead..

The new dishwasher has been installed in the gap at the far right end of the counter. The Head Dishwasher, Ed, much appreciates this new-fangled convenience. It's very quiet and has a built-in timer so it's easy to wash dishes in the night when the electric rates are low. (That's a good thing, too, since we forgot to put the electric outlet where you could reach a timer.) The gap on the left holds the active and backup propane tanks for the stove. The cans for trash and recycling sit under the sink, and there will be some shelves and carts for the usual undersink stuff. Eventually there will be curtains across the open part of the counter, covering all this stuff.

The countertops for the peninsula and the little cabinet left of the stove have been ordered. We don't have a delivery date yet, but expect them mid- to late-October.

While looking for over-the-sink lighting, we may have found the lamp we want for over the kitchen table. And, we may have found a kitchen table to replace the plastic garden table we've been using since we bought the house. (We bought it on our first visit and used to carry it outside to eat, until Kaye spotted a small round table on sale for only €10. We use that outside and the kitchen garden table largely stays indoors these days.) We'll visit the potential table on the weekend. We still haven't found over-the-sink lighting that we like, but that can wait a bit.

The big task remaining now is the wall tiling behind the sink and in the window. We're having trouble deciding exactly what we want here and not finding lots of things we like in our visits around the shops.

Otherwise, not too much has been going on. The weather suddenly turned sweater weather and we've been lighting the pellet-burner evenings and some mornings to take the chill off.