With the water off, the wall trimmed by 8 inches and the sink gone it was time to start to putting up some carcasses and see how it all starts sitting together. One thing to note is that due to plumbing issues on the opposite wall the kitchen is now in this location as opposed to it’s original place of against the main wall. I say this because this was a last minute find and this explains why the kitchen DOESN’T BLOODY FIT!

Originally we purchased the kitchen units to fill up 2500mm made up of 1 x 1000mm carcass for the sink, 1x600mm carcass for the gas hob and 3x300mm small cupboards to allow for storage and by having to flip the kitchen it was 500mm over which meant I had to lose 2x300mm cabinets. Not the start i wanted.

Luckily the solid wood (untreated) work top was 2000mm long as was always going to be cut down, so with a small layout change we had something looking like this now.

1x1000mm, 1x600mm, 1x300mm and a 250mm gap between the last cupboard and the uncovered stone wall. This wasn’t the end of the world as I now have room for my 200mm wine cooler so it was time to assemble the parts and cut the worktop.

The work top appears to be the best priece of wood in France. Seriously it was solid, so solid it took 2hours to cut the holes into the work top for the sink & hob. It really was a case of measure once, measure again, and again and then once more then cut. Things were slowed down by the fact the hob didn’t have any sort of cutting template so a lot of patience, swearing and team work between my father and I and we had the wholes in and cut to size. Finally a bit of a breakthrough.

After sleeping on it for the night and feeling positive it was now time to tackle getting cabinets built, leveled and joined together. While I built the cabinets, Dad sorted out the waste and the pluming to the sink while making sure the final cabinets were lined up and then we finally dropped the top in and got our first look at what we could expect the kitchen to start to look like and we liked what we saw.

As we put the doors on to complete the kitchen there are a few small jobs outstanding that needed to be done. Firstly the work top needed to be sealed to protect it against water, oil and usual cooking wear and tear. This was done later but due to the cold there was a 12 hour wait between coats as the sealant wouldn’t go off. This typifies everything that is happening with the house at the moment, one step forward two steps back.

Talking of two steps back – the gas hob is missing a fitting (am I’m still trying to find it on sale) and the wall needs to have a tiled splash-back fitted and then the sink sealed.  However with the doors on, the water on and the waste working there was a huge sense of pleasure and relief that the main part was now finished and what we almost had was a fixed position and working kitchen, but I can’t underplay how nice it is to have hot and cold running water on tap again…

And without further ado ladies and gentlemen here is our temporary kitchen, almost ready to go but the fruits of some solid work in zero degrees. Personally I’m extremely happy considering the kitchen location had to be flipped at the last moment and of course a chunk of the wall fell down.

There is a full set on flickr HERE with all the images from the kitchen build in it’s various stages that you might enjoy seeing and of course not forgetting PART 1 of this eventful bit of DIY.

Small Update: I found a picture that shows the amount of wall we had to trip off to compensate for the bits that fell down. The bit that actually fell off was on the right hand side of the picture but to the left of the sander as you see it you can see a bit of wall we’d not yet trimmed off. Personally while the wall top may not be super smooth, when you have to trim 6 to 8 inches off a plaster brick wall this isn’t too shabby at all. Dad & Me 1 – House 0