The year of the sink

I would love to do a mini post but my organising of the workroom has spilled over into the rest of the house and at present I am working in the attics and bedrooms. 

So here is a D.I.Y. post from about 18 months ago to a year. 

Before I began my mini Journey I had a maxi one ! I live in a huge rented house that has not had any updates in yonks. Now you might as many people have said think me mad to do work on a rental but as long as I live in it I want it to be liveable and comfortable. It began with my horrible nasty dated bad quality kitchen and of course I got sidetracked during the summer by the lack of garden sink. Some friends were throwing out their old sink, I had some cellular cement blocks handy, found some old wood, bought tiles from Emmaus and voila! 

 Here I marked out the height and worked out if I could walk around it to get to the woodshed on the left. I had just painted that section peacock blue as it was nasty old wood. The peacock paint came from the bin! 

 I laid the blocks and waited for them to set before placing the wooden supports.

 Here I was chipping away the blocks to accomodate the bowl of the sink, an easy job with this type of cement block.

 Here above is the finished sink. It's a special tap/faucet that takes the hosepipe as it is not plumbed in. The waste water is linked down the drain no problem. I used the blue paint again to make it all harmonious. I use this now for potting up and washing in the summer. 

I also have a back kitchen which is very useful and serves as a laundry/storage area. I wanted a large sink to wash the dogs in so I bought a huge resin sink on Amazon Germany and again made a cellular cement base onto which I built plaster block supports. The sink is quite lightweight. The back tiles are the same as the garden sink, a job lot of amazing Italian tiles for 2 euros! Lots left. 

 Now for the main kitchen. The owner told me that she loved her oak kitchen until I told her that it wasn't real oak and was falling apart at the seams. She said she trusted me so after finding this photo for inspiration I went ahead. Initially I was going to replace the tiles but in the end I just chipped out the broken ones and replaced them with some from the old tiled worksurface. The tiles had been laid on plaster which had rotted and the tiles were loose anyway. Oddly these tiles are the same as the ones in my old country house many years ago. They are a classic pattern from Desvres.

Here is where I came from, the doors had come off as did the tiles and the sink was my pet hate Stainless steel. The set in cooker worked when it felt like it. The floor is not so bad, small hexagonal terra cotta.

After restoring the back wall and under sink I built two side supports in the same cellular cement with brick fronts. The support beam in just joist wood and the curtain rail is from the charity shop as usual. I painted it a few times leaving it to cure each time to cover the red brick. The cement blocks had to be skimmed with plaster mix before painting. 

Here I added a saucepan cupboard to the right and tiled the top and the front of the sink base with the old left over tiles to unify it all. I used one of the old fake oak doors here.The towel rail is an old curtain rail with nice brass filials. There will be a mirror in the frame one day when I finish painting all the remaining cupboards the same F&B blue grey. The shelf above was really narrow so I pulled off the front trim and added a plank before re ataching the trim and painting it to match. Another pet hate sits on this shelf , a TV !! but friends watch it so needs must. I now have pleasure using my kitchen so it was worth it as before I dreaded that broken dark room.

Now that my gestures have become 'small' it is going to be hard to go finish the kitchen but I will. Unless of course ,,,,,,