Cheery's country living adventure

Cheery_Daff

Interestingly (or not...) I've had the washing up liquid on the side, and Mr Cheery thinks it's going to start leaving a stain on the granite... 🙄 He already had a panic earlier when I was chopping oranges and some of the juice got on there. Suspect I may live to regret the damn granite if I'm going to have to be stupidly precious about it... 🙄😂

Anyway, good news - all appliances and crockery etc are now out of the temporary kitchen and in the real one 😁😁😁 I have done the first run/clean of the oven, and then made a batch of granola and a linda McCartney pie 😂 Done SO much washing up, we've basically just not been doing much for the last few months and stuff has just been sat around either getting dusty, or in the chicken run, or wherever 🙄 slowly being reassembled.

Started painting the ceiling, but it was quite warm, and the paint was just drying almost as soon as I put it on there, and it was just annoying. Might have to do another slightly watered down coat before the final one, yawn there's a step in the ceiling, so I did just the face of the step (if you see what I mean) then gave up.

Spent about half an hour sorting clothes in the bedroom, which had become a dreadful and embarrassing dumping ground 🙄 Made good inroads, although there's still quite a bit to do.

Changed the sheets too, and realised that there is a lot of bedding to wash... The washing from the other day is dry now (having the dehumidifier in the room with it works wonders!) so I'll stick another load on tomorrow.

Feel like it's been quite a productive weekend!

edwink

Cheery_Daff said:

Interestingly (or not...) I've had the washing up liquid on the side, and Mr Cheery thinks it's going to start leaving a stain on the granite... 🙄 He already had a panic earlier when I was chopping oranges and some of the juice got on there. Suspect I may live to regret the damn granite if I'm going to have to be stupidly precious about it... 🙄😂

Hi Cheery

We have had granite in our kitchen for over ten years and I can honestly say that you can allow getting orange juice on it. In fact, we use half a fresh lemon on our granite around the sink and the taps as the lemon removes any limescale from water splashes, etc.  We have an island in our kitchen also with a granite worktop on it and as we always cook from scratch we cut everything up on it and there is no need for a chopping board because granite is so hard wearing. To keep it clean we just use Method antibacterial spray after preparing veg etc and every so often we use Method granite cleaner which always makes it look nice. We have been so pleased with our granite and have both said it was worth every penny because for us it will never need replacing. Hope this reassures you.

Most of all enjoy your new kitchen because after all you have been through you have certainly earned it 😊

Take care.

Edwink x

EssexHebridean

Similar “real world” experience here - things getting spilt on our Silestone (which is slightly less resistant to “life” than actual granite or quartz ) aren’t a problem - what you probably don’t want to do is leave spilt stuff sitting on it too much as that does seem to mark it - although not badly. So a wipe round after cooking does the trick nicely for us, plus a wipe over the area we make tea/coffee every couple of days but I literally just give it a swish, it gets a proper clean over once a week or so.  I confess I am fussier about ours than our old worktops, but as much as anything that’s just me being anxious because it was a huge proportion of the kitchen cost, for us, and I worry I’ll ruin it! 😂

WU liquid seems to be fine - again I just clean the area where ours sits when I do the rest of the kitchen and it’s not left a mark yet. 

Cheery_Daff

Thank you ladies, that's reassuring! I think he got to worrying because the area looked a bit darker after the orange juice had been on it (probably sitting for about 10 mins while I faffed about, not realising it was there). And I'd been starting to make some citrus vinegar to use as a general purpose cleaner but apparently that's not great with granite.

Very much hoping ours will never need replacing too - was similarly a high proportion of the kitchen cost and I don't want to go through that experience again! 

Just need to get these joints sorted out - are either of yours filled with rubbery silicone or are they hard epoxy? 

Back to work today (at home) and a day of assessed presentations, which were always intended to be online. I'm doing them with a lovely cheerful colleague so should be nice 😊

Outside of work, I'm going to try to reinstate Monday Finance Day, and there are a couple of other little extras, trying to get into some good habits as the house is slowly restored.

* ring and register guarantee for the hob (or at least check if I need to)
* banks and YNAB
* check how to claim money for being without power for several days 
* put a load of bedding in the wash
* put away dry washing 
* order new bra - the ones I ordered that I was convinced were the same as the one I was wearing, actually weren't, and while they are the same size, they have much less coverage and don't fit properly. Parcelled up to send back
* going to use our Lidl voucher tonight so do a meal plan!
* cook double of tonight's tea and freeze some

That'll do!

EssexHebridean

The only joins ours has is the upstand to the worktop - and that is almost a cross between the two I'd say - it clearly is a "squeezeable" sort of filler but it's harder than a traditional silicon. And that, I know is NO help to you at all!

I've been told that citrus and vinegar are both no-no's as cleaners for ours, but it's fine to use a standard limescale remover spray (I use a Sainsbugs one) but to not use that too often and to leave it no more than a couple of minutes before wiping off. The same applies to any other form of cleaner as well in fact - spray on, leave for 2 minutes max, wipe off, then wipe again with clean water. I then buff with a soft cloth then lose ten minutes smiling at my shiny surfaces but that last bit's optional... ! again, that's Silestone not granite of course - they are broadly similar but not totally the same when it comes to care. 

I'm with you on trying to form good habits. Come to think of it, also with you on preferring a bra with a bit more coverage. I'm always wary of anything that might allow escape attempts. 

edwink

Cheery_Daff said:Just need to get these joints sorted out - are either of yours filled with rubbery silicone or are they hard epoxy? 

Hi Cheery

Our joints have hard epoxy in them which is a very dark rust colour. We have black granite with light terracotta/peach colouring all over it.  We have 2 joints on one side of the kitchen and neither of them is noticeable. The other side of the kitchen just has 2 separate long lengths of granite with a biomass boiler stove in the middle of them. The upstands at the back have silicone sealant.

Hope that helps.

Edwink 

hb2

We can't dry our washing outside and find the dehumidifyer really helps - both to dry the washing and keep damp/mould at bay.

I need pretty strong underpinnings and currently find that Pour Moi are suiting me, I tend to keep an eye on Ebay and buy when I see something at a good price.

Cheery_Daff

Thank you edwink, that's helpful and confirms ours isn't ideal - it's already looking grubby and has only been in a week! 

Hi hb 😊 Will check out Pour Moi, not heard of them. As a temporary measure I'm going to reinforce/replace a couple of hooks on my current one! 

Well I confess I've done barely anything from my list today 😮 Discovered a possible mistake I'd made at work that nobody else picked up on - why I noticed now I have no idea 🙄 So spent quite a bit of time fretting about that - nothing to be done sadly except probably a bit of a difficult conversation about practicalities 🙄 Hey ho.

But we did end up going to Lidl and using our voucher - £10 off £40 was definitely worth having!  Felt nice to get back into the frugal vibe of keeping a rough tally of how much we slwere spending as we went round 😂 And we bought actual food and ingredients! I've been eating just porridge or sachets of pre cooked lentils or toast and easy stuff for so long. We actually proper stocked up on veg and all kinds and it was good! 

Didn't batch cook tea though because Mr Cheery made me some while I was still working - just rice and kidney beans and egg - very frugal 😂😂

Cheery_Daff

Nothing more done, although I have gathered the washing ready to put in the machine tomorrow. It's a start! 

Ooh, and I went back to what I'd written the first time I did uber frugal January in 2017. So interesting to see how different things were!! The treats budget was about £75 a month for a start, and we were perfectly happy with it - now it's well over £200 😮😮 Food we were trying to cut down from about £250 🙄 we were spending about £50 a month on diesel 😂😂😂

Quite instructive to read back - I'd posted it on an old blog so I'm going to go back and read some more of my old posts for frugal tips 😂😂

EssexHebridean

I read back through some of my Frugal Friday and Frugal February stuff a while ago - it is fascinating to see how things change and even more in your case with such a huge change in your home situation!