Kitchen

Now that the bathrooms are all up and running (just the small matter of boxing in to complete) we've been able to start sorting out the kitchen.

You may recall from one of my posts back in March that we've bought new cabinets for 1/3 of the kitchen, the island is second hand and we'd planned on reusing some of the old cabinets for the rest. This weekend was the first opportunity we've had to start putting the cabinets in place, prior to the electrician wiring up the appliances. The quality of the new cabinets is very evident, especially with the various trims etc that have been supplied to finish off around the built-in oven. Certainly isn't like installing flimsy flat-pack!

We've also sanded down the old pine kitchen units and started undercoating them. We thought long and hard as to whether they should be restained or painted. Paint won, even though it's more work it should give a more consistent look, especially with the oak worktop. For the past few weeks I've been sceptical as to whether the old, and rather dirty, cupboards would be any good to reuse. But with a clean down, sand, and the first lick of paint, they already look vastly improved and very unlike the greasy units that we inherited in the old kitchen.

Spurred on by the rest of the kitchen I've attacked the reclaimed island unit again with the sander. We've used some eco paint stripper to get the worst of the old paint off so this time the sanding has worked well. Previously the sandpaper clogged up rapdily with gooey lumps of old yellow paint. Not this time, so the parts that we want stripped back to bare wood are almost there and the remainder is ready to undercoat.

Before we buy the top coat paint, for all the units, we've got to decide what the final colour will be. Not proving to be an easy decision....!