Preoccupied With Pigeons and Kitchens

Early this summer I noticed a pigeon start building a nest up near our roof line. Unfortunately, there was nothing I could do to make her move somewhere else. She ended up laying eggs and then I couldn't bear to get rid of her. So I named her Pidgey-Lou. And her partner is Mr. Boo. He only came around from time to time, but the nest was really too small for both of them to be there together.

Pidgey-Lou had two babies and I watched her feed them from my sewing room window. They always got very excited when she came with food. One day I noticed that peeping was coming from below. I went downstairs and found that one of the babies was on our balcony. I guess he fell out of the nest. He had a broken leg, but managed somehow to get to his mama when she came with food. The next day, the other baby was on the balcony too.

They have pooped everywhere, but I love watching them, especially when Pidgey-Lou comes to feed them. They get all excited and flap their wings and peck her and are generally noisy. They fight each other too, to get at mama. (I named them Tweedle-dee and Tweedle-dum. Tweedle-dum was the one who fell out of the nest. He seems to be doing fine now, but has a limp). They enjoyed having our old kitchen cabinets on the balcony. I think it was like a playground to them. Sorry, we had to haul those things to the dump!

We began renovating our kitchen on August 7th. We are undertaking everything by ourselves and it is a little scary considering we haven't renovated anything before. Luckily things are going pretty smoothly so far. We ripped out all the old cabinetry and the super ugly backsplash.

We are keeping the tile floor but have to fill in the gaps where the old cupboards were so that the new cabinets have a nice level ground. It was pretty nasty on the wall behind the sink. I guess a lot of water leaked in over the 30-odd years the kitchen was in here.

We had to do a bit of wall repair where the old backsplash was ripped off, but we aren't professionals. It looks ok, but most of it will be covered with our new tile backsplash. It sure makes a lot of dust though!

We then primed over most of the wall to seal it. I bought a small can, but we used the whole thing. I'm sure that I could have bought a bigger can and done two coats, but I think it was good enough. At least I know how to paint! I tried to teach Nader how to do it, but he wasn't very confident in his abilities. I think it was fine.

I ended up doing the second coat of paint by myself while he was at work since I had time. We also left a message for anyone who will renovate the kitchen in another 30 years! It will be behind the new base cabinets. Now we are going to pick up the first load of cabinets and the test will be the installation. We need our plumber friend to come and help us deal with a couple of things before we can install the cabinet where the sink will go. I hope it all works out!

I haven't been sewing much in the last few days, but I do have a little project to show you soon.

xo Nicole