For years I had been promised a new kitchen and had all but given up hope of getting it. The old kitchen was old with brown coloured cupboards that I had painted white. Mice were frequent visitors, although there seemed to be no way they could get in. Spiders were often hunted down and cockroaches had started appearing out of nowhere. The cupboard tops were always in need of cleaning and everything was just inconvenient for my age.
One day a man came to measure up for the new kitchen. Hooray, I thought, as he wrote down his figures and discussed colour schemes, and so on. he gave me a time of about six weeks for the job to start. As that time came and went I had actually forgotten about it.
Some months later a doctor treated my extremely painful foot with an injection of the cells he had taken from my own blood (stem-cells). He was attempting to stop the pain and sent me home with strict instructions to rest the foot for a good 24 hours or so for the treatment to work properly.
Barely had I stumbled into the house and sat down when the phone rang. It was the guy to do the kitchen. It was Wednesday and he informed me they were coming on the following Friday to start work. What! I begged for more time, knowing that the entire kitchen had to be packed up.
He said they could not wait because they already had the kitchen on the truck and on its way down from Sydney and they would have no-where to store it. It had to be started on Friday.
From that moment on and for the next day and a half I rushed around on my foot packing things into boxes, loading furniture and other things into the spare bedroom, and finally emptying the fridge and loading its contents into an esky. By Friday I was almost a cot case when they arrived right on time at 7.30 a.m.
They started by hauling out the cupboards and sink. It was then that the big shock came. Behind the cupboards there was no wall. A large gaping hole went straight into what would have been the wall cavity and of course here is where the vermin were entering the house.
The large pantry that had been installed a few earlier was to be kept and moved to the other side of the dining room where it could be utilised as a sewing cupboard. The men hauled it into position but it wasn’t fixed. Later that night as I walked past it down it came right on top of me. Pinned between the cupboard and boxes of stuff from the kitchen I was trapped.
Slowly I managed to grab a chair and pull myself out but then another dilemma. Everything was locked up including the side gates and front gate. The keys were on the other side and so was the phone. Still trapped by my circumstances I gingerly had to crawl over the heavy pantry cupboard to get to the other side.
Finally, all was done and I look at the new kitchen. No more vermin come in, all the holes in the wall were covered or repaired, and the new cupboards reach to the ceiling so their tops never need cleaning. The beautiful new kitchen is a pleasure to work in and the extra room it has given me is marvellous.
Despite the pain and the cupboard falling on me the effort was well worth it. A new dishwasher and micro-wave were also installed and it is so good now it made a new woman of me.