Lettuce joy

So the seeds I planted a few months back didn't get up to much, and there were so many weeds I gave up. Fortunately a few weeks ago the local primary school had a fete, where I picked up four teensy lettuces for 20p each. A few litres of miracle plant grow, daily watering and nightly snail squashing has resulted in these enormous lettuces.

I was going to tear off a few leaves to make a salad at the weekend but friends arrived with a gourmet version, so we've yet to taste them. We've been enjoying the spoils of next door's raspberries, blackberries and cherries. Their apples aren't quite ripe yet though. (I should mention that the neighbours are in Singapore for the forseeable future so they don't mind us eating their fruit).

It's a nice feeling living in central London but eating as if we're living in the countryside. If these lettuces survive throughout August I'll be extremely chuffed.

Measuring up

Be still my beating heart: the measurements have been taken for the splashback! Unfortunately, the kitchen fella forgot one of the "important" measurements and is coming back tonight, but we're on the road to getting a 6mm thick bit of toughened glass installed this side of Christmas.

The concrete counter top isn't completely flat, in fact, it's quite wavy. The edge of the glass is going to be completely straight. We're going to get around this little hitch by running a metal edge along the splashback where it meets the concrete. Hopefully this will remedy the visual hiccup that having a matte lime green wall peek through in places would create.

Another issue was that the switch for the waste disposal was only two centimetres away from a socket - the gap between the two is too narrow, the glass can't be cut with a thin pillar between two holes as it might crack. This is easily remedied - we'll move the switch closer to the socket. Well, Rob will if he can figure out how to drill into the wall.

Splashback update....

Photo taken by: Victoria Birkenshaw (available for editorial and commercial work in the UK)

My main hobby right now is getting the lime green wall in the kitchen covered with toughened glass. I had a cocktail accident recently which involved two litres of fruit, vodka and soda water blasting out of the blender and things got messy (Yes, that was a deliberate double entendre).

The splashback quote we originally had was in the region of £550, but if you're a reader of this blog you'll remember that the company who quoted refused to show up to take the measurements. Despite 2-3 weeks of quite regular pleading phone calls.

The latest quote is more than double but at least they return emails and phone calls (eventually). However, it's been nearly two weeks since the quote was confirmed and despite me trying to sort out a time for them to come and measure up I've yet to hear back from them.

Is there really a recession on? It seems to me that there's plenty of work out there for glass manufacturers at least.

(This snap was taken a few months ago. I'm using it here mainly because it shows the kitchen and partly because it shows my neighbour looking like something from a Martin Parr retrospective.)

Foxy

Foxes in Hackney have had justifiably bad press lately, thanks to the awful incident with the baby twins being mauled in their cot while they slept (not far from where we live, actually).

We've noticed an increase in fox presence the last few months. Twice we've had a cub on the roof of the glass extension, which I can assure you, is incredibly freaky when you're looking up at a hairy belly and the doors are wide open.

Lately there's been a sunbathing fox over the fence from us. (Pictured - photo taken from the top floor, she's that brown smudge next to the hedge. Excuse the parched lawn). She's there in the morning, the evening and whenever it's sunny. I thought foxes were nocturnal? One of my neighbours bought a sonic sensor which is meant to keep foxes and cats out of his garden, but I've seen the local tough cat sauntering straight past it without so much as a twitch.

Lounghead

Still no splashback to report. The second company assure me that I'll have a quote soon. I gave up on the first company, as they just wouldn't show up. There hasn't been a whole lot of of progress regarding any part of the renovation really.

Last month we spent a week at the same French holiday villa we stayed at last year. The owners had taken my advice and bought a set of really good chef's knives (joy) and had replaced the sun loungers with new ones (pictured top). Our garden gets the sun until 6pm during the summer and it's a bit of waste to watch the lawn from the house. I decided to go to Habitat and get my own lounger, which are on sale right now for £31.50. I got mine in hot pink, and saved another 15% off the sale price due to some promotion they were running at the weekend. Unfortunately, since buying it, it's been raining in London so there hasn't been a whole lot of lounging going on.

Dusty limits

This is probably karma. Our lovely next door neighbours have relocated to Singapore for two years and are demolishing the back of their house to do something similar to ours. The noise is phenomenal and the mess is eye watering. There have been two skips filled in the last ten days. I can't seem to sneak anything in there either as the builders need every bit of space for their fast accumulating debris.

Check the glass in our extension (photo above) - it was cleaned not that long ago but is now thick with brick dust and dirt. No point in hosing it down as the construction is nowhere near finished.

The builders are very friendly and I'm hoping they do a good job and finish somewhere near the budget and within the timing schedule as I'd be keen for them to quote for phase 2 of our house. The local glass company never got back to me about fitting our splash back so I've moved on to another one, only these guys seem reluctant to pin down a time to pop over too. Is there a shortage of glass suppliers in London?

Sunny outlook

This photo was taken on a cloudy afternoon to show how quickly the outlook has changed. From a few spindly, naked trees it's now a lush green mess. As far as the eye can see we're looking across other people's gardens. Pretty much all other properties are obscured by foliage. And no-one can see into the glass extension, which is just as well given how exposed it is.

The photo doesn't really do it justice, but trust me, living this close to urban London life and having the feeling that you're in the countryside is a bonus we hadn't considered when we bought this house. It's not even proper summer yet so the trees will only get denser in the next few weeks.

Another job done

A classic before and after for your perusal. This is the lacquer on the concrete counter top. Not long after we started to use it, the lacquer began to peel and lift and as you can see after 18 months of usage looks pretty rough.

The quote we had to sand it back and reseal it was astonishing - and that's when we finally found a company who would consider doing it. Apparently concrete companies are of the belief that if they didn't install the concrete, they won't do any maintenance.

Fortunately, the guy who did it in the first place came back from his holiday and was only to happy to swing by and sort it out for the cost of hiring all the bits and bobs, plus a very reasonable day rate (thank you Isaac!). He ended up coming round on three consecutive days and the sanding created the mother of all dust storms in the house, but hey ho, check out the 'after' photo below.

While concrete looks the business I'm pretty sure I'd get Corian next time. It's just too painful to get concrete fixed when it starts to look shabby, and inevitably, it will look shabby.

Next step is to get the glass company to show up to sort out the kitchen splashback. It's been 8+ days of fairly continuous phone calls to remind them to show up...

In plane sight

It was the Queens 84th Birthday celebration this weekend. We were alerted to the fact by the rumbles of fast approaching low-flying aircraft. I'm sure most people in Hackney could claim that the planes flew right over them, but in our case, they really did - as you can see from this snap of the sky taken from inside my kitchen through the (grubby) glass.

According to The Times: "After taking the salute the Queen and other royals returned to the Palace where they watched an RAF flypast by 13 different types of aircraft, including World War II Spitfire, Hurricane and Lancaster, modern Typhoon fighters and the Red Arrows aerobatic display team. The Battle of Britain Memorial Flight led the formation to commemorate the 70th anniversary of Britain’s defeat of Germany"

It sounded like 13 types of aircraft. I wonder if the elderly residents of London's East End felt nostalgic or terrfied when they heard the racket.

Green fingered fun

This little plastic addition to our garden was a birthday present from some Dutch friends. It's called a cold frame and is meant to assist seedlings burst into something useful, whilst keeping creepy crawlies out.

I've managed to sprout a selection of chives and lettuces, as well as some weeds, but I can't quite tell what's a weed vs lettuce at this point. Slugs and snails have managed to bypass the corrigated plastic and infiltrate the frame. I've poured table salt around the edges to deter them and if that doesn't work will try sinking a plastic cup of beer into the ground as that's supposed to kill them (or at least make them tipsy and lose their motivation?)

Am hoping that we'll end up with a selection of healthy lettuces soon as it tastes so much better to eat fresh leaves than something that's been kept in a plastic bag and washed in bleach. I've never had much luck with plants (now down to just one house plant indoors actually) so I'm not holding out much hope. Plan B if the lettuces don't survive is to buy some ready sprouted seedlings and plant those out.

(Tips on keeping them alive would be gratefully received!)