Get a grip woman!

Suffolk_lass

We (DH) topped off a wonderful few days by cracking the brand new (fitted at the beginning of March) hob on Saturday night. He grabbed an oven grab cloth and a bottle of wine was on the tab, tipped over and took a chunk out of the edge and sent several cracks across to the the gas plates. So that is £350 wasted completely and now we will have to remodel part of the kitchen to fit a new hob, cupboards above, extractor fan and tiling/splashback. And we will need to find someone with proper grown-up tools to cut a bigger hole in the 40mm thick granite worktop. All that assumes we can swap without having to make different holes in walls and that similar or complimentary kitchen cupboards exist.

A real life lesson in not buying the thing you really really like if it is anything other than the same size as all the others. Our hob is 36cm wide with a 34cm cut out. The depth is more standard but the width is a real issue. I searched for two years (because a coffee jar had cracked the back corner of the last one) and eventually found an ex-display one. Desperate not to lose the granite top.

He is having a completely miserable few days. We started to move things around in the dining room to make more space for the loss of storage in the kitchen and he dropped a stack of our dinner service soup cups (they don't make it any more, needless to say) and smashed the handle off one. Don't ask me why he was attempting to move a stack of two-handled cups!! I actually cried (pathetic and made him feel carp, but a wedding gift from my deceased god-parents) - things are getting to me I think. I have searched through all the china replacement services and managed to find one and ordered it. We are not talking about money. This weekend has the potential to run into thousands. 

shangaijimmy

Oh no. It seems your 3's are looking more like 6's!

The only rational thing you can do is to blame Dominic Cummings!

themadvix

Oh SL, what a grotty weekend! I hope things improve from here on! I like Jimmy’s suggestion! 

rtandon27

Ouch!  So sorry to hear about the weekend's misadventures SL! 

greent

Ooof- sorry to hear about the latest troubles, S_l. Hope this is now the last of them.. x

Busy_Mee

Oh what a rubbish few days you have had. Sending you a big, social distanced virtual hug x 

XSpender

I hope this is the last of your accidents and incidents.  I did exactly the same thing with a bottle of wine and a glass hob, it cracked right across the middle.  Can you claim on your insurance under accidental damage?

Suffolk_lass

Dominic Cummings - I like that - "Dim-Dom" as he is known in our house - except that that is really Dom Raab's nickname, so I believe. 

Both of our battle scars are beginning to heal, and stuff (walls for the shower) we have ordered for the van awaits delivery. DH has cut a hole in the bathroom wall, through to the wardrobe (we won't use it for much except coats and shoes storage) - so that the offending bathroom cabinet can be sunk into the wall, thus a bit of accident prevention has been achieved. It needs a wooden frame to sit in so that it isn't relying only on gravity to keep it there, but hopefully this will be a good solution and makes locating the overhead LED lights more straightforward, as there won't be cupboard shadows to contend with.

In the kitchen I began researching and he began designing. He has contacted a stainless steel fabricator who makes bespoke things for boats to ask for a lead time and price to make a hob top out of brushed stainless steel to replace the glass. The rest of the new hob would just be resting on brushed steel rather than glass so if it is economically viable we will do that. I don't think the increased premium on the combined (building and contents) house insurance would be worth us claiming, although it is attractive on one level. Let us see where it goes. Our premium is almost £1300 this year (because our house is thatched).

My research has focussed on a wider hob that would fit depth wise, will run on LPG, and does not have the big burner at the back (because the wall stops you using a big pan on it (like a wok!). Damage to the wall cupboards either side is an issue too. Our current hob (36cm wide) under a 60mm extractor fits snugly between 2 wall cupboards both of which are showing de-lamination steam damage to the bottom corners so whatever we do, we plan to bite the bullet and replace the cupboards with two that are 10cm narrower each side, and a slightly wider extractor. The tiles that are the existing splashback are a pain in the proverbial to clean so a brushed stainless steel one will help. There are also two cupboards that are a pain to access so I want to replace the interior of the one by the stand mixer with two deep drawers and store cooks ingredients in them, and move the wire basket drawer that is in the top of that cupboard currently, to under the sink. I might encourage DH to modify the current spaghetti junction of plumbing pipes to a more simple and straightforward arrangement at the same time - only two sinks and dishwasher and washing machine but several deep dipping U-bends with T-junctions that have not been minimised in length (my research into compact solutions for the Van are useful here!). Finally (maybe) we have two hopes (Bob and No) of matching the door and drawer fronts so a contrast that is the same shape may be the way to go. Plan B would be some painted MDF or ply, with a decision on whether the rest of the kitchen will follow (a friend of a friend resprays cars, which we might test)

XSpender

We painted all our kitchen units from a dark oak to a light blue when we moved in.  Valpar can mix up any of their colours into an aerosol although it does vary in colour slightly from where we have used emulsion from the tin. 4 years later and it only needs touching up in heavy use areas.  I painted the glossy utility cupboard with furniture paint last week from B&Q using a mini foam roller and that has worked really well.

Suffolk_lass

Thank you @XSpender - that is reassuring. I don't really want to remodel the whole kitchen and this approach might give it a new lease of life and look a bit bespoke too