Tuesday 21 February 2017

Something old, something new ...

Our kitchen is many, many years old, having changed it from the ancient one that was in when we moved to this address. Water damage, damaged veneer, chips and bangs means it is not fit for painting over and quite frankly, I wouldn't have the patience. I know how long it would take! When photographed it looks great, but it isn't. Quite a few doors are bowing from either the top or bottom and no amount of adjustment works.

We have saved up and decided to change the doors and drawer fronts on all the cabinets. Not cheap but then nowhere near as expensive as replacing the whole kitchen. The worktop will be fine for quite a few more years although the sink will eventually get changed as will the taps which have massive bleach damage to them when I used toilet descaler by accident:(

It took quite a while to work out what we needed. First problem we encountered was the height of the top cabinets, our shorter size are no longer made. Even though we only need doors for them, we have had to splash out an extra £5 per unit as we need the door from a door and drawer pack to fit these top cupboards. Everything else worked out fine apart from that extra expence.

Then when we went to order them, we were told it would come in two deliveries 2 months apart. We didn't fancy that and were worried we would end up with only half the kitchen being finished when the second half of the order failed to materilise.

Today, it all arrived and although we don't have any plans to begin the job until next week at the earliest, (still dealing with the hole in the ceiling), we couldn't resist trying to attach one door and one drawer front to see how it would all look. Mistake!

The drawer front attachments don't fit our drawers (despite measuring) and we cracked one drawer trying to attach its new front. We now realise we shall have to replace all 3 drawers:( Blimey, adding up!

Okay says we, lets attach the door. Now in preparation for ordering, we had already measured the gap between old and new hinge attachements, which matched up okay. What we didn't realise is that the two hinge holes on the old doors, are spaced differently from those on the new doors. Yes the gap between is fine, and the bottom hinge fits neatly into it. However the new top hinge fits 3" down from the top, whereas the old one is only 6" down. How did we miss that!!

Luckily, this doesn't mean having to redrill hinge holes in the doors - thank God - but DB will have to drill new mini holes in the cupboard sides to take the screws for the top hinge - a small mercy.

Onwards and upwards, onwards and upwards!


4 comments:

  1. We got all new doors and work tops last May, but we got a builder to fit them all as we needed some new cupboards where we had had a different size cooker.. he did a super job, but we are leaving it for someone else as we decided to move.. but we shall have the same builder to put in a new kitchen where we're moving to. Hope yours will be super too.

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  2. Nothing is ever straightforward is it? We need a whole new kitchen, but I keep putting it off because I can't face it :(

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    1. Certainly is difficult. I designed the kitchen first time around so it helped this time, apart from these unforeseen hiccups!

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