Anyone still checking this blog for updates has probably been wondering what has happened to me. The exciting excuse I have to offer (the most recent excuse at least) is that I've been distracted by an on-going kitchen fitting project. And if you don't think thats exciting then brace yourself for the inevitable photo compilation.

Our old kitchen was perhaps the only part of our house that genuinely annoyed us. It didn't have the space we needed. It was shabby.We disliked the colour. etc. etc. And even worse - it was hard wearing and refused to ever break in any meaningful way. Over Easter we finally snapped and decided to replace it.

We did a lot of shopping around and speaking to suppliers. They were pretty much all terrible. Some had good points - like B&Q's great hand-holding design service - but then they all ended up blowing it with crazy pricing and ludicrous 6 week lead times. Call me unreasonable but I almost never by anything unless I get my hands on it within a day or two. I've spent too long working with computers, where anything you can dream of can be shipped to you within 24 hours, to go back to accepting massive lead times. Add to that the instability in the market and you're highly unlikely to find me giving a glorified logistics company like B&Q such a long credit line.

If you go back to the basics you quickly come to the conclusion that a kitchen is a bunch of cheap pseudo-wood boxes with fancy doors hung on them. And no-one does cheap pseudo-wood better or cheaper than IKEA... and they have the whole lot in stock. If you want a solid wood kitchen to last 50 years then go elsewhere, but compared to rest of the competitive end of the market they're a breath of fresh air. They had everything in stock except for a couple of panels which we collected the next day. Superb. And they even let a loony like me run this lot through the express self-checkout (15 items or less) aisle ;)

You may also notice that the photo above contains 3 IKEA picture frames, an IKEA lamp, an IKEA rug and an IKEA sideboard (there is another one out of shot, along with an IKEA armchair, some more frames and probably a lot more stuff besides.)

So I just want it on record that I -hate- IKEA. I really like some of their products and their pricing can be compelling. But in their physical form of big blue boxes full of crowds of hellish people ... well that I hate.

The first job was to go a little crazy with the hammer, crowbar and saw. We cunningly managed to cling on to a working cooker for a few extra days by sawing the worktop into pieces with the hob and gas pipes still in place.

The wall mounted pipes were very annoying and required every floor unit to be modified in some way. This was especially tricky with the fancy carousel corner cupboard, but at the end of the day the trusty circular saw has ways of making things fit. Some minor changes were needed to the electrics to accommodate some new units and lights, it was all pretty easy if a bit time consuming.

Cutting the new worktops was one of three jobs for which I sought professional help. You need a proper guide (which is fairly expensive) a good router and a bit more confidence than I could muster. Getting them cut to properly knit together, fit the walls (which weren't square) and take the sink and hob was money well spent. I'd have undoubtedly destroyed at least one length of worktop trying to get it right.After they'd been cut it was fairly easy, but very fiddly, for me to fit everything to the units.

Professional helper number two was our friendly neighbour the plasterer. Doing the plastering after fitting the worktops was something we did because we were waiting for a gap in his scheduled work, but it actually turned out well.

While the plaster dried (the slowest part of the build?) I fitted the sink and redid all the under-sink plumbing. This was the most frustrating part of the project, and the only job I did where I had to re-buy parts and change my plan. Consumer "no solder" plumbing supplies are only just good enough to do the job they're sold for. My experience is that if you don't get it correct first time then you're better off binning them and starting again with replacements, or you'll never get a proper seal. Still, after a lot of messing about I now consider myself a master plumber and I even repaired a long standing low-pressure problem with our garden tap while I was at it.

Next came the paint. Not a lot to say about this... we went for white. Exciting stuff.

On the home straight, the wall cabinets went up in a single evening. Mind bogglingly simple compared to the base units. By this point we also had a working hob again, thanks to our final professional helper - a gas fitter.

And finally we're just about done. We have lights, we have plinth. We have the little wooden lip that goes around the floor. There are handles. And worktop matching upstands running around the wall. And a funky glass splashback. Yippee. All the tools are back in their boxes and you can make food without wading through sawdust. Happy days.

Most of the remaining jobs are fairly simple like replacing the face-plates on all the sockets and switches. The only significant bit left is making a nice new gloss box for the boiler.. we bought some extra panels (in the white) from IKEA for the job. Something for me to look at in a couple of weeks, when the family's sawdust aversion has died down a bit.

All in all this was a pretty simple build. It took 20 days from start to finish, which was longer than I'd expected but I can't complain as I hardly killed myself trying to get it done. If I'd booked workmen (rather than just phoning round neighbours and neighbours' friends asking for free time) then I'm sure it could have been done in a couple of weeks without too much stress. The average installation quote we had was something like £1800 to £2000 (with a 6 to 8 week lead time), lets just say that I'm very happy that I gave it a go.