Kitchen progress

You may remember how the kitchen used to look from this post. We'd hoped to just give it a lick of paint, possibly paint the cabinets... Just basic stuff. However. Tragedy struck in the form of a roof leak which left us with this (dun dun DUN):

I could have cried. We hadn't budgeted for a new kitchen so this was a bit of a disaster. The water ran down the wall behind the plasterboard - which meant the wall was ruined. The kitchen units were fine but as we had to fix the wall we decided at this point that to re-instate the old kitchen, which would save money, would also look a bit pants. We decided to bit the bullet and rip out the kitchen as well. The roof was fixed so SBB got to work ripping off all the old plasterboard.

Here's the wall with the new plug sockets cut out. SBB did a great job of attaching new plasterboard and we both stood back to admire it. It was a beautiful wall - as plasterboard goes - but there was one problem. Due to a measuring error the sockets were cut in the wrong places. Whoops!
So he had to take it down and start again. To say he was little miffed would be an understatement.
Then, new plasterboard in place, SBB got to plastering:

He did a really great job - he's not a plasterer by trade but he learnt the technique in order to plaster our place. He only had one lesson from a colleague and then he got down to it and (I'm not just saying this because I'm biased) he did the most beautiful plastering I've ever seen - seriously, some of the walls were so smooth it was like glass. But boasting about my husband's trowel skills aside, he got to work on the kitchen and a couple of days later it was ready to paint. Then we looked up.

There was no way that we could install a new modern kitchen and have the artex still on the ceiling (see above picture). SBB didn't fancy skimming the ceiling so we called in a pro.

THEN it was time to paint - and that was my job. We'd decided to paint the kitchen white - but three under-coats of cheap white paint to prepare the plaster and then another couple of coats over the ceiling and walls and I was beginning to wonder whether we'd gone crazy.

But looking at the room with the new flooring and I know we made the right choice. I'm a little envious of the person who buys the flat because I'm really starting to love the kitchen!

In retrospect I'm a little bit grateful to the roof for leaking - if it hadn't we'd have just done a quick touch-up and called it good but now the have the opportunity to make it a really great room.