It’s hard to really explain how challenging cooking on a very old natural gas cooker can be for 3 adults.  Not having any space to move pans around normally means everything is cooked in one pan and you’re never really feeling the cooking love especially as the “cooker” is on wheels and the only storage you have are plastic bags under the sink. Well it was time to change all that.

The current “kitchen” is no more than a breeze block wall that is holding up a cheap sink and the portable gas cooker. Given that we know we are going to totally refurb this area as part of the major renovation it did not make any sense to start putting in a final kitchen so the decision was made to buy some B&Q cabinets & doors, a natural gas hob from eBay and a solid work top from Brico Depot to try and give us somewhat of an inexpensive but functioning kitchen.

Items Purchased & Suppliers
Kitchen carcases & doors (B&Q) – £345
Natural Gas Hob (EBay) – £90
Sink (Brico Depot) – €88 (£85)
Taps & Waste (Brico Depot) – €40 (£39)
Solid wood work top (Brico Depot)- €99 ( £95 )
Wood Sealant (Wickes) – £10
Total Spend – £664
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Preparation & Sanding

So this is what we started with ( click for larger image ), I have no idea how long it’s been here but it’s time for a refresh and there were a few things we needed to tackle first and this was going to be somewhat of a messy job.

You see every service that is available has been plastered and then stippled to give somewhat of the same effect as Artex ( without the asbestos ) but it’s a right nightmare so the first job was to remove this and the quickest way to so this was with a belt sander but that was only going to result in one thing and that was massive amounts of dust, and that’s just what we got.

Wearing eye protection and a respirator the place soon filled up with dust.  At the start it was comical how much there was but it soon dawned on Dad and I this this was a small wall no higher than 4ft x 6ft and we had far far bigger walls to come. This was going to be messy but it had to be done.

Once the sanding was done it was finally times to start removing what was there,

Removal not as easy as it appears.

It’s now time to start removing that is there starting with the awful tiles that are used as a splash back.  A claw hammer and a chisel makes easy work of this. Next it’s time to remove the sink so with the water off, the waste secure we removed the link and that’s when the corner of the wall fell out. I couldn’t believe it you should have heard the language. It appears that the sinks final position in the wall was level with the join in the wall and removing the sink dislodged this and away it came.  I don’t have any pictures of this due to the sense of humour failure I was suffering at the time, but my quick thinking father realised that the breeze wall could be trimmed with the rip saw and that’s what we proceeded to do. More dust, cursing and breath holing while the whole structure wobbled we levelled the wall and proceeded to remove the sink, ready for fitting.

As you can imagine to get to this stage there were a lot more pictures as this was an eventful job that should have been so simple. I’ve uploaded a few images to the gallery below while I write part 2 of the build and fitting where we try to get something like a useful kitchen.