Julie's Boggle

Apologies to anyone who feels that we’re lingering a little too much on the kitchen topic of late, but it’s hard to focus on anything else with this all-important area of our home having been turned into a building site!

We did finally clear another significant milestone on Thursday though when the new worktops for the kitchen arrived.

Their delivery was actually the second part of a two-phase process, the first of which was the “templating”. (Which is a bit like cutting out a pattern if you’ve ever done clothes-making at home.) For this, the friendly guys from Polished Stone came over with a supply of hard-board and magic-markers, and cut out exact replicas of every surface we would need.

It was all done with great efficiency. They then handed me some granite samples for us to choose from and went off to await our decision.

After some thought, we picked the aptly named “Star Galaxy” option. Black with gold flecks. The variety of flecks we wanted in the granite had been a point of indecision beforehand (we both agreed plain black was too dull), but Star Galaxy won me over when I saw how well the gold bits picked up the warm tones from the wood and the tiles.

And then, a week later, came the big day when Jonathan and Tony returned with our hefty granite slabs…

Just like assembling a giant jigsaw, they slotted them all expertly into place.

(There had been a concern with the sink piece initially – they’d got back to us to say that it didn’t look like it could all be got out of one slab of stone. )

Option 1, a join, would not have looked as good but they had given us the other alternatives of a full refund on our deposit – i.e. start again with someone else, or paying out another £1000 to cut the whole lot from a bigger block of granite . We took the join. And were subsequently delighted to find that they had actually worked out a plan and managed to get that delicate piece all out of one. )

Once all the pieces were in, there were lots of minute adjustments of cupboard levels, then applications of joint material, silicon, and a protective layer of polish before they could finally step back and say it was all complete. Hurrah!

For anyone who wants to see more of the above photos and other details, they’re on the second page of our Kitchen makeover album.