Friday 20 February 2009

The promised floor...

You know my living room, you know my situation thus you know my Linoleum floor.

Let's get to work.

Preparations

Ikea's parquet has many advantages, it is smooth, well crafted, elegant once installed and the upper layer is REAL wood ( one millimeter but it is the thought that counts ^_^ ), besides the price is really interesting.

Doing it alone is possible, although quiet difficult so I did ask Fred to lend me a hand because let's face it, Two working penguins are more fun to watch.

So the planned Saturday I woke up early and with some unrepeatable cussing I moved all the content of the living room ( remember it? it was the pile under the plastic sheet while I was painting) into the bedroom.

Results may be seen in this lovely caption.


My bed is somewhere there....


happiest chap of the house was my Ficus who follows me patiently in my self induced Belgian nomadism since about the first moment and that has been moved around the flat two days straight.

I'm convinced of plants having feelings, I do suspect they have some form of reasoning, I'm thus very happy they do not have the gift of words.

One foul mouthed inhabitant is more than enough.

Praise the Lord and pass the hammer

First part of this work is to put a plastic layer over the floor as insulation, in fact that done you can directly put the planks on it without dismantling the previous floor. Quiet the advantage I have to say.



One of the problems I was painfully conscious off, from the other side, is that this room has an oblique wall.

Putting the plastic wasn't that bad, one cutter cut later it was placed.



Sadly Wood is a bit more pigheaded and a cutter will not do much about it, so i knew what was coming...

Anyway I was quiet proud of myself and at 10 in the morning everything was moved, plastic was laid and we were ready to rumble.

Piece of cake...

Three hours LATER...

Do you still remember my Kitchen?

I thought it was the only inflatable room of my house but apparently I was wrong.

Putting a wood floor means put the first strip against the wall as a guide and then build the rest following that.

No matter how many time we tried, arrived to the third strip the floor was a mess and it seemed that no strip could fit with the other ones.



After the sixth time we unmounted and restarted I was on the verge of crying as I calculated how much IKEA would have asked me to do it for me.

Believe it or not it was then that my screwdriver fell on my hand, rolled on the floor and rested against said wall.

I crouched to retrieve it and noticed that the shadow on the wall was strange.

It took me a second to realize it, then I came back with a spirit level and confirmed my intuition.

Bloody walls are curved.

Some heavy cussing ensued as we unmounted once more the planks and started again using the spirit level as a guide this time.

After 45 minutes the first three rows were set and the floor was stable enough to be started thus we could allow ourselves a little lunch pause.



Intermission.

Fred is my MC, he loves to eat, he loves to have good time, he loves to drink. You want to party? Just follow my bro.

That said on work he is theutonically inflexible, no rich food or he will get sleepy, pass the sandwiches.

I was ready to cook and was demoted to sandwich fixer, nonetheless I took my revenge fitting two heavy homemade bread slices ( recipe to follow) with Ham, cheese, horseradish sauce and red krauts.


CROOOOOOM!!


To drink we had the REAL construction workers beer: Cara-pils.

Cara-pils is such a bad beer that in comparison Budweiser actually tastes good.

So what does that thing do in my fridge I hear you ask? Well, it is quiet an acceptable ingredient for Venus' beer ( another recipe for later ^_^).

Couple of belches later we were ready to start again.

Second halftime.

From there on there were really little problems.

A broken hammer



The door had to be reduced to adapt it to the new height of the floor.



And , naturally, the issue of the diagonal wall, which was brilliantly solved by Fred using a piece of cardboard.



All you see took two days of work, but actually only three hours on sunday ( which means that in fact without the wall issue we could have finished the first day)



Linoleum is no more and nobody wastes tears on it, now we can pass to phase 2: Furniture.

TO IKEA!! Go Go Go!

Monday 16 February 2009

I love those quiet snack moments before the storm....

Dear friend of mine writes me a mail asking more informations on Hummus and, eventually, the recipe.

For info and story of the dish, Wikipedia is your friend, for complete recipe, just keep reading :)

Hummus:

Ingredients for two:

- A can of chickpeas.
- A spoon of Tahini sesame cream.
- Two tea spoons of lemon juice.
- One or two garlic cloves ( depends if cuddling or a job interview follows)
- Nice pinch of salt.
- Olive oil.

Garlic is not there because it is camera shy ( true story)

Execution.

- Open the can and drip the liquid in a galss ( you might need it later)



- Mash the chickpeas using a mixer and add ( if needed) the liquid so to have a smooth cream.




- Salt, do not be shy. It has not to be salted, but the peas are sweet enough to require a bit of it.


- Pour a spoon of Tahini cream ( not too full, this stuff has a strong taste).



- Add the two tea spoons of lemon juice.



- Add a little olive oil



- Crush the garlic and add it to the cream.




- Cover the hummus and let it rest in the fridge for at least two hours.



- Drop a bit of olive oil just for the taste and then you can eat it.



You need bread that you simply dip in it, this is libanese bread, but you can use any sort of soft bread ( do not use hard crusted bread, taste not that good ).

A little note, Tahini is not that easy to find unless you live in a town that has an arab quarter.

And now it's me and you Linoleum!!