Oot and Aboot

One of the many interesting items to be seen at Articlave

Despite the hugeness of our kitchen I have very little workspace so, after many months of nagging, Bert started to make me a kitchen island. We discussed it for hours and I was confident that Bert knew exactly what I wanted. I was sadly mistaken.

Now Bert is an excellent carpenter and he really enjoys getting into a new project. He works a lot with recycled wood which is both economic and green. Where he falls down is in his ability to explain what he is doing and what he intends to do. This is why I ended up with what is essentially a huge table. Albeit a beautifully made huge table with a floor made out of the upstairs ceiling in the old derelict house at Clint's place. All that was needed to complete it was a tiled top. Or so Bert thought.

The unfinished kitchen island

He has been gently persuaded that a kitchen island needs shelves and cupboards and places to hang tea towels and utensils. It is not just a huge table with a tongue and groove floor for the cat to sit on.

But anyways - we decided to go to the reclamation yard at Articlave to see if we could find any old tiles for the worktop. That has to be one of the most interesting reclamation yards in the country. It was full of stained glass windows, jaunting cars, church doors, mangles, bangor blue slates and Bann brick, huge oak beams, radiators, Britain farm animals, ornate carved thrones, lamp posts, fireplaces and a thousand other things. Everything really but the sort of tile we were looking for.

Bert tries out throne for comfort

It was still a damn fine afternoon out. We'll get those tiles somewhere else.