Sunday, May 23, 2010

The Enchanted Lettuce Forest



This picture was taken a week ago. Since then a major deforestation event took place (the fennel forest was uprooted as well, and basil was planted instead). We still don't know what will come instead of the lettuces and the spinach.

Cilantro is next on our uprooting agenda.


It seeded and is now dead. The seeds were collected, and we will plant a few of them soon.

Sunday, May 2, 2010

Small Projects in the Kitchen

Our kitchen is mostly done by now (as you'd expect!!), but it's still not completely done. That will only happen years from now, when we've replaced the tiles (well, I hope it'll be sooner than that, actually, and more about the tiles some other time - it's a LONG story!). But in the meantime we've managed to do some things, like install all the cabinet doors, install the cabinet hardware (you know, drawer pulls and little knobs. Other projects took more time, like the AC vent that comes out of the over-the-range cabinet. Last time you saw it, it probably looked like this:


We had to cut the door on the right side to fit under the shaft. We also put some boards around the shaft, so we can later attach the grill onto them:

You can see the doors and knobs here, too!

Then we had to paint the grill, because, for some reason, they only come in white! (or some ugly brown, but not for the size we needed). Spray-painting is much harder than I thought. You have to apply just the right amount to cover everything, but not too much to make it run. I can't say I succeeded, but since it's hanging up above the microwave, it looks mostly fine:


Besides that, we also installed lights, and now our kitchen is a lot better lit! We replaced the little fluorescent light in the kitchen that was hanging perpendicular to the kitchen layout, thereby not lighting a lot of the counter space. Instead we got a much longer fluorescent light that hangs parallel to the kitchen layout, and lights up most of the kitchen without much help from any other light.

We also removed the old '50s-style chandelier that was hanging in the dining hall:


And instead put an oil-rubbed bronze chandelier, that goes nicely with the ceiling and our kitchen faucet and cabinet hardware:

With fluorescent light bulbs, of course!