Oak Worktop Love

So last Thursday our Kitchen looked like this...

and by midday Friday it looked like this...

It was really only after we took the old worktops off we discovered quite how crappily build these units are! Ok the are the cheapest of the cheap, only put into the house to sell it by the last owners, we have lived with them for nearly 4 years and they have not stood the test of time well. They are all made of chipboard which doesn't help, meaning after a while anything screwed into it will just shred the chipboard and it will dissintergrate. Of course it doesn't help if they haven't been bodged together in the first place...

So Rich has spent the last few days rejigging them and strengthening everything up, to keep the cost down we reused the old aluminium sink as there was nothing wrong with it but we decided to flip it around so the bowl was on the other side of the drain board, this had the knock on effect of having to switch the draws around...man that was a palaver! It pretty much ended up with Rich at midnight last night still rebuilding the whole unit!

Anyway its finally done now, the hole has been cut for the sink (don't ask, that took about 6 hours to get right!) and the oak work tops are on but not attached yet.

While Rich was doing all this I finally got rid of the last of the horrid wall cupboards (donated to the same neighbour who had the last one) and stripped, filled and repainted the wall, which looks much better now.

The plan is to put up some shelves here using the oak offcuts and some lovely old brackets I picked up at a book sale a few weeks ago.

We where also planned to buy replacement doors for the units but for two reasons we now will be reusing the ones we have, firstly it appears these doors are a odd size and I cant find replacements anywhere, meaning we would have to have custom ones made which leads us to the second reason, cost! We simple don't have the budget so it looks like we will be repainting the ones we have, white hopefully with vintage handles.

Busy few days, we're both nackered now! Still, another step closer to finishing (sort of!), will be glad to be able to wash up in the sink again and not the bathtub...