The Reason for Not Much Knitting Going On Here :-)

Well these pics are the reason why I haven't done much knitting lately. After 2 years of being stored in the garage my new!! !!kitchen cupboard doors and worktops have finally come out to play when hubby got his *RSE into gear and finally took on the dreaded task of revamping my kitchen.



Gone are the yucky yellow tiles (which a few people have commented since on how much they quite liked them.. they didn't have to live them though), the odd worktops that have been odd for the last 6 years because when we extended the kitchen we couldn't afford a new one so to fill in the extra space we used second hand cupboards and some spare doors we were sent when some of the originals started to split. We had trouble getting matching worktop as it was discontinued so we made do with some old from my SIL because she was having new at the time. In fact from when we bought the house (which was a wreck) we always had to go with the cheap, quick and easy option, and to be fair hubby and his family did a Stirling job to fit an off the shelf kitchen into an empty space that we ordered with only having seen the kitchen once on the house viewing. Over the years as I said it has been added to, reworked and shuffled round when we knocked the outside sheds into the living space and it has been perfectly serviceable, in fact a darn site better than the kitchen at my previous house, but it was only suppose to last a few years...over 10 years later its finally had a face lift.



As I said the new doors, worktops and indeed paint were all bought two years ago, but we still needed a new sink, taps and wall tiles. Whenever we got some money together it would be either Christmas and so it would be spent on that or the car was in a state and so we had to get a new one. Hubby managed to convince me last year to go holiday instead so that delayed it even more, back in Jan though I sort of had a flip moment and one day back from taking the kids to school I decided to get the paint out and go ahead and paint, I was fed up at how tatty it looked, the walls were dirty and paintwork awful. I just thought sod it if I'm going to wait another two years then I may as well paint it anyway and maybe it will feel a bit better, so I went for it one morning and surprised hubby when he came home from work. It took me three days in all, artex ceiling are a pain!! and the wallpaper just soaked up the paint and it took about three coats to cover it properly. I didn't use the original paint bought for the kitchen though, I'd bought yellow to match the tiles but was then adamant I wanted new tiles so I found some magnolia and used that instead. You can't see much of it though to honest too many toy shelves and doors etc in the way.

Anyway it finally galvanised hubby into action, he started off slowly by making the end shelf units etc first ,and we hunted down cheap tiles, the whole kitchen cost less than £60 to tile. A basic sink and taps reduced we found in a sale. Then hubby decided he wanted the old integrated cooker and hob taken out and a slot in one fitted instead. He never liked the integrated ones from day one and because he was doing all the work I finally gave in and agreed, he wanted electric but we couldn't find the socket switch which was hidden by plaster boarding from when we moved in, and then it turned out there wasn't space on the fuse board anyway so we had to have a gas one or a new fuse board and a lot of wiring which would have meant all upstairs floorboards and laminate flooring coming up. So I have ended up with a new double oven gas cooker. The old one was a basic 2 in 1 grill and oven which although I learned to cope with it was limiting and a pain in the backside when trying to cook for parties etc.

Now I know hubby did the vast majority of the work (helped in part by his BIL and brother as well I must add) but I wasn't allowed sit twiddling my thumbs or rather clicking my pins, I found out early on it didn't go down too well, and things went much smoother and quicker if I was on hand as a gofer or labourer to do the menial tasks. So I made the sacrifice of my pins lying unused and unloved behind the sofa for few weeks, but I must say I am very pleased with the result. It may not be to everyones else taste, and it was done on the cheap, quick and easy route yet again but for another 10 years or at least until I've saved up £20,000 or so for my ultimate dream kitchen (mind you that may mean restricted stash enhancement, never gonna happen!) this will do me very nicely thank you very much. Hubby you've done me very proud. Thank you.