Final stages of kitchen

I managed to finish painting the walls.  Now I am putting some final touches to the room as there are a couple of ugly bits left, plus the walls look a bit bare.

There is a space at the back of one of the units where the new cupboard doesn’t entirely conceal an area that I think once may have been an outside door but has long since been bricked up.  J had the great idea of camouflaging this using some very Victorian looking wicker picnic baskets.

So far so good but there is also one area where the old cooker was which is bare untiled wall.  I am going to tile it myself, but firstly I have to level the area off properly in preparation.

I am not sure what some of the white looking parts are – I think they are some super thick form of distempered wall coating – not ordinary wallpaper because water has no effect.  I managed to scrape any loose bits off with a scraper, but I daren’t try anything more vigorous because the plaster behind is not in super great condition.  So I have made it as smooth as possible, and tomorrow I will prime it with the ever faithful Zinsser primer.  Then I have some all purpose tile adhesive which claims to be able to smooth over slightly rough surfaces so I shall put that on and hope for the best.  I am not god’s gift to tiling but I will give it my best shot.