Paint

The kitchen is complete – was completed two weeks ago now – or at least complete apart from an edging strip between the kitchen floor and dining room floor, which I suspect the builder has forgotten about. And the painting – that's not quite done, but not far off. I started painting the ceiling and walls a couple of weekends ago – spent all day Saturday and Sunday at it, getting covered in paint for my trouble – and going through several colour schemes, as each one came out slightly disappointing. They were all supposedly shades of white – but then white can come in so many shades. So this weekend I did the walls again – two coats, yet another off-white shade – which may have to do, as I've run out of patience (and whites).

The problem was the units – stone-coloured, they said, though from my experience of stones they can come up in quite a broad spectrum of colours – which made it awkward to find something suitable for the walls – not too similar, not too wildly contrasting, not too dark and sombre (it is a small kitchen). I downloaded an app on to my phone which can paint your walls in real time. Not actually paint the walls, which would have been welcome, but simply colour in wall-shaped regions on the screen; which was entertaining and usefully distracted me from getting started with painting but was perhaps not much use in selecting a colour.

In summary, the skirting boards need to be glossed over (preferably in white) and then it will be finished, and I can move the fridge-freezer back in. There are still boxes scattered around the house containing various items of kitchenware, though I have emptied the obviously useful ones and am now faced with the odds and ends which I wonder whether I actually need or whether they may be safely committed to the bin. Not to the skip, you notice: it was finally taken away last Saturday, leaving a sad brown patch on my front lawn.

Hob

We are getting there. Admittedly, this is Day 11 of the great kitchen reconstruction, so it has not been the speediest of processes, but there are some things which are best not rushed: they just take as long as they take. Although if it gets done before I run out of clean clothes, all the better.

Today the kitchen is pretty much all in place: the units are in, the worktop too (despite having to be manipulated indoors through the kitchen window), floor tiles on the floor, ceiling lights on the ceiling, under-cupboard lights under the cupboards; the sink and all the appliances installed and functional with the exception of the washing machine which is still sitting in the living-room (unless that happens to be its intended final resting place). So I had a go at cooking a modest meal this evening: very modest, inasmuch as I simply heated some soup in a saucepan. But at least I heated it on the new hob, using gas for the first time in many years. (Previously, I was stuck with electric hotplates which I always found to be infuriating to use, although useful as an excuse for occasional cooking disasters.) And then I washed the dishes in the new sink (one and a half bowls), rather than in the bath, which I've never found particularly well suited for washing dishes.

I feel a little wary about putting everything back into the kitchen: the upstands (whatever they are) still need to go in, as well as the odd plinth; but really I don't want it to look a mess too soon. At least not until I've managed to paint the walls.

Plaster

The kitchen has not yet returned. I would like to be able to say I am getting used to living like this, half the house crammed into the living-room, subsisting only on what can be heated up in the microwave or toasted in the toaster (or occasionally what can be bought from the takeaway), washing the dishes in the bathroom, observing the availability of wearably clean clothes diminish at a worrying rate.

But at least things are slowly taking shape. Everything that needs to be ripped out has been ripped out. The plasterer was here the other evening. Five hours it took him to plaster the walls. For pretty much all that time I stood chatting with him. There's not much I now don't know about plastering.

The units are, I hope, being installed tomorrow. The floor units are already standing loosely in position, lacking doors and drawer fronts and the necessary appliances, but at least giving an idea of how things will eventually look. The kitchen was quite spacious when entirely empty: you can't help thinking all these cupboards will only get in the way.

Sink

The kitchen has gone – has made the short trip to the skip on the front lawn. It was torn out, unceremoniously and with a hammer, leaving ragged half-plastered walls, pock-marked where the tiles were heartlessly chiselled out. Pipes cut off in their prime point aimlessly into empty space.

Exquisitely sensitive to the slightest disturbance to her normally placid existence, the cat is distraught, partly from the deafening racket proceeding from the kitchen all morning, and partly from the chaos that has descended upon the soft furnishings, with all her favourite resting places hidden under boxes or moved somewhere obscure. Even her food is not where she expects.

In a futile attempt to counteract the stress of the last few days, here is a calming and relaxing picture of boats: