I must rate some sort of award for the slowest DIYer in France
It has taken 8 years but I have finally put the almost-last touches on the kitchen by actually installing proper lights, not just a dangling bulb.
8 years ago, almost to the day, we started ripping out the old kitchen
Anyone else have DIY projects which should have taken a few weeks but which somehow stretched out to epic proportions?
Looking good and you aren’t here full time so excellent job.
I started the knock through on one of the doorways in the stable conversion in August, due to the fact that what I thought was brick, turned out to be an old attempt to knock through which they had given up on.
Behind the brick was late 16th century Roman type ash and lime concrete with granite and flint rock thrown in, due to other jobs on the go and the concrete being the hardest I have come across and my hands playing up, I didn’t get it finished till today a new doorway through to the kitchen area and on the other side, the on-suite.
Now I just have to lift all the old knackered cobbles, line the walls, new floors, install a new bathroom and fit a new kitchen, finishing with a set of patio doors and a new roof 
.
The on-suite needs to be finished for June 
I forgot to add, the wall was 22" thick and it had been an old chimny they had filled in with concrete.
Puts my efforts to shame 
Not really I’m retired , here full time and bored, you are still working and mostly in the UK 
Stop spending so much time on here and get on with! 
The house I am renovating at the moment was last done in 1960’s.
Each room has a dangling light bulb. No one in over 60 years had thought of putting a proper light.
So yeah, I think you are doing fine. Bit ahead of yourself in fact.
I like the carrelage on the kitchen wall BTW. It is very different. I like that.
Out of interest, what have you done on the other wall where the original units were, do you still have storage.
Looks good @billybutcher . Only thing is, I don’t see anything there you can use to cook with 
. I assume that’s on the other wall ?. If so, I think anorther piccy is in order 
It was a bit untidy yesterday
Thanks
It turned out to be a good choice for hiding the fact that I am hopeless at tiling and applied the adhesive far too thickly in places.
In fact I’m pretty crap at DIY generally - being dyspraxic does not help so the photo kindly doesn’t show all the errors I made - including forgetting to allow for the thickness of the cupboard fronts when cutting the utility worktop as well as misreading my tape measure and making it 10cm too short; so I now have that total no-no of an unsupported join where the worktop goes over the top of the washing machine.
nice job.
I’m always impressed by people who can do DIY, however long it takes. I was at the back of the queue when God was handing out those skills and I’m afraid no amount of encouragement by those who can has made any difference.
I always take the attitude that if my wife is happy with the job, then I don’t give a feck what anyone else thinks
There were units both sides. However the previous owner didn’t have an oven, just a gas hob and a microwave.
They were an absolute ******* to get off, the fronts look OK but it was all bespoke and made from odd off-cut bits of wood that must have been reclaimed at the time they were built - they were also held in to the stone wall with heavy duty fixings which had been hammered in to the point that they bent as they went through the layer of plaque de doublage covering the original stone wall - thus they would not “unscrew”, nor could we pull them out easily. Eventually brute force overcame the problem but it wasn’t easy.
It (DIY) wasn’t my first choice - but I decided that remote management of a French artisan would be more fraught with difficulty.
I found a grinder to be the best way of dealing with the old farmers DIY/bodging, it’s an invaluable tool with the farm.
Don’t mind untidy at all 
. I like the eye level oven. It’s what I’ll do when I get round to replacing our 50 shades of brown kitchen 
My DYI kitchen also took me 8 years! Bought the IKEA cabs 5 years ago and finally got them up around Christmas this year.
Had an electrician help with the wiring, but the rest is DYI. Moved the plaque induction to the other counter, added an AirFry oven (the house had no oven when I bought it) and centred the sink when changing.
Here are some before and afters:
Don’t you just hate it though when your partner keeps reminding you every year about finishing it !!!
