Kitchen is coming along nicely!
We abandoned the idea of Andy making worktops from scratch when he found some nice chunky wooden worktops online.
http://www.kitchen-surplus.co.uk/timber_worktops.html
This place does some fantastic deals on solid worktops. They delivered fast and the quality is outstanding. I highly recommend them if you are wanting wooden worktops. We got the farmhouse oak and paid the price on the website, plus 40 for delivery. Bargain!
Obviously they come as a 3m untreated board, so you need to treat and saw it yourself. Luckily, I have an Andy who can do all that!
I have to say, that boy done good. Considering he has never cut a worktop before, he did a fantastic job! Mind you...he hasn't done any of what he's doing before and he's doing great.
He even cut nicely round our new sink! Only 1 side is done as we need Rich to finish the plumbing before we can put the units in on the other side. More of that later.
On to the sink; we've been looking for a Belfast sink that will fit a 500mm unit but weren't having much luck. We then found that a reclamation place near Stow was selling some new Armitage Shanks ones for about 200 pounds so we set off to take a look.
When we got there, we saw one outside which measured up and was perfect. When we enquired, the chap said we couldn't have that one as it was damaged. He then proceeded to show us the tiniest hairline crack on the side of the sink that you can't even notice, and would be covered up by the units either side.
Anyway, he knocked it down to half price because of the "damage" which did us fine! The taps we wanted were 350 quid so we headed to ebay once again.
We found a seller who had a poorly listed large Belfast sink for sale with taps for 70 pounds so we snapped that up! We might have even found someone who wants to take the large sink off us too!
I bloody love ebay.
Most of the stuff in the kitchen is from ebay!
It looks great! I'm very pleased.
Believe it or not, the unit to the right of the sink has an integrated dishwasher inside and the unit to the left has an integrated washer dryer. We didn't buy them from ebay. We got them from currys! But, I managed to find a 10% off voucher by doing a Google search for currys vouchers and saved about 50 quid.
Andy has also wired a new fuse box which we've sat in the hole that was the service hatch.
We need Southern Electric to come and move the old meter as its on a wall that isn't going to be there soon, so we will get it connected and checked and have a nice new fuse box hidden away!
We're going to be putting a push open door for access which will be concealed by clever tiling.
The other thing we've done is put our wagon wheel light up!
This was the first thing we bought from the house (ebay again!). As soon as I saw the inside I knew it was crying out for an amazing hanging light - and I wanted a wagon wheel!
We aren't happy with the chains. Usually, you'd have one chain come down and open up into 4 chains connected to the "light" but we obviously have a window at the top that a chain can't be attached too.
We had to go 4 into 1 back into 4 and we just aren't liking how it looks.
We're going to see what it will look like with 4 chains coming straight down, I think it will look better though. You can't really see from the picture, but trust me - it doesn't look right as it is.
We haven't added any lighting yet, we wanted to get it out of the way and see what it looks like. We're going to have candles around the top with LED flickering lights for effect only. Then we will have an LED bulb in the bottom to give downlight.
When it's finished, like everything else, it will look amazing!
Richard Browne has been back in to do some more plumbing. Bless him, he has a tricky job as the area he has to work in is so tight.
We have to have a hot water cylinder of at least 190l capacity for the Rayburn and we needed it to fit in a kitchen cupboard so it's as close to the Rayburn as possible. The system is all gravity fed but I won't go into details...mainly because I don't fully understand it myself!
Anyway, we managed to find an online company that make custom sized cylinders and with a calculator on their website that lets you put in sizes and tells you how much capacity that would be. This was extremely useful and we managed to find a size that fits in the cupboards and gives us the capacity we need!
They were extremely well priced too - I'm sure we paid about 200 for the cylinder, fully insulated and delivered.
There she is!
He's done a very neat job with the plumbing and is very nearly done! One more visit should do it, which I'm glad about because he keeps polishing off my favourite caramel biscuits!!!
All the pipes will be hidden behind units once done.
Finally, I've been taking a long time to decide on what colour to paint the cabinet doors but I've now decided!
I'm going to paint them a similar colour to the walls (light grey) with some nice pewter knobs.
That's my test door. I think when it's all done, it's gonna look great! It's amazing how a lick of paint and new handles can transform kitchen unit doors.
The worktops will be stained dark like the floor, and there will be tiles along the wall in a crackle glaze, random pattern like below:
I can see it all taking shape which is very exciting! It won't be long before we can start on the extensions.
Andy thinks it will take about a year from when he starts digging the foundations to us being in a position where we can move in. That won't mean we are completely finished, but enough to be out of the van, finally!
We are hoping to get out conditions satisfied by West Berks council soon too! Our architect sent them new drawings showing the landscaping and where the protective fencing will go. I bloody hope they like it!!!
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