What winter sunshine

Another week of steady if slow progress and only a few uninspiring photos to show for all the work. I really wasn't very happy about the length of the overhang on the kitchen island design and after thinking about it over last weekend I resolved to do something about it.

So on Monday morning I built another layer of support in front of the one I built last week. There is still 11 inches of space for knees and the whole thing looks much better balanced.

It doesn't look that different from the front but I am now happy that I have got it right. The difficulty now is deciding what I am going to make the top from. The two main contenders are granite/stone and wood. I was originally convinced that granite was the best option but since I have been researching options on the internet I am now not so certain. I have been looking at Houzz.com, which I very strongly recommend to anyone interested in home and garden design. I have been looking at rustic kitchen designs on the site and have found some very attractive alternatives to granite that I now feel may be more suited to my cabin.

While I was adding the additional support to the front, I decided also to make some temporary draw fascias to protect the inside of the draws while all the work is going on around the island. I bought some factory made fascias to get the dimensions right and then returned them. I am minded to make the final fascias and doors from beetle kill pine with it's lovely natural blue highlights.

For the remainder of the week I carried on with the wiring in the kitchen, this time getting all the recessed light fittings installed. For this I had to put in place first all the batons that will hold the dry wall boards that will go between the beams.

The ceiling here will be sound insulated to protect the bedroom above from the kitchen noise. To reduce the risk of fire, the building code requires isolation boxes for the recessed lights in order to separate them from the insulation material.

In total I have put in 12 x 50w lights. There is yet more wiring to do for the kitchen. Still required are separate circuits for the oven, the extractor fan above the gas cooker and the microwave.

I finished off the week putting in the wiring for the Thermostats for the base board heaters in the bedrooms. This took longer than anticipated because some re-routing of wiring was required. I should really have thought about this when I first started wiring but, fortunately, I had enough red 12/2 wire to finish the job without having to buy any more.

I also replaced some boxes that needed to be larger to accommodate two or more switches. Seen here are a Thermostat box on top and a double box for lights in Bedroom 2.

Weather permitting, I am going to take a break from the wiring next week and try to get the last remaining railings for the main deck in place. Kevin has promised to come out and give a hand and Stuart Doyle, who you may remember visited me in the autumn, is very kindly coming down from Northern Alberta to lend as hand as well. He is coming an equivalent distance to Yorkshire from the Sough of France and so it is a significant effort on his behave for which I am extremely grateful to him personally and to his wife who is lending him to me for a week.

I was going to wait until the spring to put these railings up, as I was concerned about them discolouring in the winter sunshine. The winter sunshine hasn't materialised and anyway the UV light levels are not high. I really just want to get them out of the house and get the deck finished, besides, it won't be long now before it is warm enough to stain them.