Kitchen bookcase and The Useful Cupboard

A year or so ago I tidied the kitchen bookcase. This old shelf unit came with us from Oxfordshire. It had been built by the father of the previous owners of the house we lived in. Old but solid. None of your shelves bowing under the weight of books here! It actually stayed relatively tidy until I emptied it and moved it to another part of the kitchen so that I could paint the wall behind it. We had a sort out of cookery books. I say we because most of them, especially the glossy ones, are Toad's. He likes cooking in theory ;)

In the usual way of one thing leading to another, bookcase sorting and moving morphed into also sorting out The Useful Box that lives in one of the kitchen cupboards, which led to my emptying an old Yorkhire Tea tin of magazine recipe cutouts, chucking most of them out and putting them in a different tin so that I could use the Yorkshire Tea tin for all the glues. I've no idea how I got onto glues! Oh, wait! I know. I'd bought some wood glue for some loose chair joints. Anyway, the whole Useful Cupboard in which The Useful Box lives got a clean out. It's a when-in-doubt-shove-it-in-(or look for it in)-the-Useful-Cupboard-place. Every household has one of those places, right?

I found some stuff to put aside for the grandsons, who are coming on a visit later this month...

This is me making progress!

...and a Japanese lunch tin of Toad's:

Then I got on with cutting away some loose plaster board and my thumb with a Stanley knife. My very old and tiny pocket penknife, once resharpened, was a nuch more effective tool (well, it was less effective at slicing my thumb being easier to use in awkward spaces!)

there's a plaster under that bandage;
it was a tiny cut!

And then, wearing some leather gardening gloves, I ripped up an old pan scrub and stuffed it into some holes in the corner behind the bookcase before fixing it in with Polyfilla.

I discovered why the kitchen telephone port that we'd ignored for ten years wasn't working: it wasn't even connected. When I told Toad this he said he'd presumed as much. Hadn't presumed to fix it though (he would have if I'd asked him to but I didn't ask so... 🙄 😉). Anyway, we even have an orange telephone, one that doesn't need a power supply, that we acquired soon after coming here because of numerous power cuts. Local power lines have been put underground now so they aren't going to get blown down in every storm or pulled down by falling trees.

The north-east kitchen door

I've taken off the door into the hall and studied its lifetime biffs, scratches and worn-from-use details. I found Toad's planing tool that had been left in a boat to go rusty. He sharpened the blade and had a go at planing a little off the bottom of the door. It has been jamming on the carpet for all the time we have lived here!

Some details around the glass panels suggest that they were not always there but put in by a DIY-er wanting more light to get into the hall. The glass is firmly set but I've bought some putty to fill the gaps. When we put the door back I want to find a way of preventing it from banging against its jamb when it is shut in a hurry. Toad and Toadlet don't do gentle door shutting much and the old sprung catch (also not the original door closing equipment, I'm sure) didn't help. Over the years I've tied various bits of rag from handle to handle, after the fashion of those cushion things you can get so toddlers don't trap their fingers.

Why the hinges, which are designed to have four screws in each side only had three each is a mystery. One of those impatient to get the job done and then forgotten about necessary 'updates', perhaps? Some more age details below. The scratches were not by our cat (or chickens).

(We never had a cat!).

This is my favourite detail of, quite literally, wear and tear. I love the wood growth waves and I think the little worn indentations, which are near where the door handle was, have been caused by people's fingernails biffing the door while grabbing the handle.

Whoever woodstained the hall side of the door
didn't take the handle off when they did it.

It's not going to look like this when I've finished!
Note the string bag anti-slam device hanging from the handle.

Next up in the kitchen decorating saga is moving that bookcase and the shelf with the CD player.

Painting the kitchen walls

The south-west wall of the kitchen used to look like this →
Now it looks like this ↓

There's another coat of paint to go on that length of skirting board and then that section is finished except for putting it back together, so to speak.
The dolphin blackboard, which is trademarked "Booth Design Workshop 1990" (no relation as far as I'm aware) will go back and so will the barometer that's underneath it in the picture. I wanted to get a new "Until Dawn" curtain by Tord Boontje until I looked at the price. I have some leftover bits but not enough white so will experiment with some that is black on the room-facing side and put it right back against the window. Summer afternoon sun through that window can be quite intense so it might work.

In this pic ←, taken in what counts as daylight on a rainy day in December, you can see the wall irregularity. The vertical ridge is there because there used to be a wall dividing off that end of the room. The high recessed window was for a tiny maid's room, apparently, that only had enough space for a bunk, a tiny bit of floor space and, presumably, some storage under the bunk for her few possessions.

Having already done the south-east wall (above and left), I suppose it could be said I've done a quarter, except that westwards of the dolphin's spot it gets a bit complicated!

west corner

I think I'll start on the north-east wall from the east corner before I get to the complicated bits!

east corner