Our kitchen is made up of a mix of Magnet base units and Ikea wall units as the Ikea ones were available in the sizes and depths we wanted. I don’t know why, but Ikea make a great roller shutter wall cupboard, but it seems to be designed to sit on the worktop and is not the same height as their wall cupboards.

So off to the workshop to cut it down to the same height. Because of the way the cupboard is made, this meant we could only do the reduction from the top, so it was out with the roller assembly, chop off what we did not want, re-instal the roller and then back together again.

Solid beech worktops with an oiled finish were specified by the kitchen boss! We oiled them with teak oil, several coats, initially with a brush. Later, when the wood will absorb less oil a cloth is a better way of applying the oil to maintain the wooden work top.

To protect the worktop from hot pots and pans, we put some “hot rods” made of stainless steel from www.screwfix.co.uk which sit in slots routered into the wooden worktop.

Well you wouldn’t think you could get buying a sink so wrong. Or a tap for that matter. We saw some one and a half sinks with drainer on the web, looked at them in B&Q, Homebase and Wickes, all of them looked very similar so we bought one from B&Q. Only when we put in on the worktop did we notice that both wastes were basket strainer wastes (we wanted a simple plug on the main bowl), there was no overflow (essential with children) and the half sink was only about 90mm deep. Our 15 year old sink had a 130mm deep half sink, so washing a packet of salad was easy, and it had a plug and an overflow.

Also the B&Q tap which we really liked the look of and was a child friendly twin tap design dribbled for ages when it was turned off – sometimes! Quite annoying.

After considerable research we found a Franke sink that was exacgly what we wanted. So with a bit of resistance at first B&Q accepted the sink back (we still had all the original packaging and had unwrapped it carefully so it was all intact) and the new Franke sink was ordered and installed. The new sink was only £30 more than the B&Q. And we got a refund on the tap and bought a matching Franke tap which again was about £20 more but shuts off every time without dribbling.

 Instead of problems with water getting in when it rains, now we have a problem with water leaking from the waste now one of the sinks is plumbed in. Of course the pipes were behind kitchen units that had already been installed so we had to pull lots out to sort it and find the crack. Looks like someone leaned on a pipe hard at some point during the pipes going in. A hacksaw and some new bits and it’s sorted.

We went a bit overboard with our path laying. We dug a trench, put some “Teram” down, put a layer of crushed concrete, then topped this with fine crushed concrete, created a concrete bed, then layed mortar and the paving slabs on that.

  We also put some drainage channel at the ends of some of the paths.

  However the finished path (still got to grout it and make up the soil to the same level) looked pretty good. A labour intensive job, with not much material cost but worth the time.

We are on the home run now, but there seems an ever increasing amount of detail to be done. Fortunately we got all our electrical fittings sorted and ordered some months back so they can all now be put in place.

 Here are some of our lovely Hamilton switches being set in place. We have a brushed chrome or stainless theme throughout the house and here are 13 amp sockets, TV and Cat 5.

 And here they are with their face plates on. We like the clean crisp styling.

 And in case you want to see, here is the back of a light switch as it goes in. This one is cut into the log face inside the house.