I can't believe how much room I have in my kitchen. Not a lot more has changed except a couple of reconfigured cupboards, but a massive tidy up and reorganisation has really helped.

Jamie worked hard to salvage the wooden benchtop, made of recycled wood. It's so expensive to get a solid wood top these days so it was worth the effort - plus it just looks so gorgeous, don't you think? Not the handyman, the benchtop...

Of course the colour deepens with the oil & wax blend used to protect it. I do hope the tennants treat it well - you have to look after a wooden work surface! I'm sure @thebigsweed will love the look of this wood...

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What do you think of the oven and induction cooktop, @galenkp? I don't think IKEA does too bad a job! They seem quality and they work really well. I chose one without the stupid digital clock I always have to reset in a power cut.

As you can see, we haven't got the drawer fronts yet. We're still deciding on the colour and we'll likely cut our own from a sheet of ply. I absolutely love having those three drawers though - it was a cupboard. This way I not only have a beautifully organised cutlery drawer - -

-- but also space in the other drawers to arrange my pans in a very neat way. I chucked ANY pans that were old and replaced them with new TEFAL pans in the Christmas sales. It seems extravagant but you didn't see how bloody awful my old pans were!

I also rearranged the laundry cupboards - I use the adjoining laundry as a kind of butler's pantry where we keep the kettle and coffee maker, cups and glasses and so on. I couldn't have doors on them as they'd hit the cupboard, but the baskets there look okay I reckon. One is for calico shopping bags, one is for tea towels - and I'm not sure what the third one is for yet.

We also sanded the cedar window so I could oil it - it really was getting shagged from damp and mould. Jamie had a special tool that made it easy to sand right to the edge. It's not perfect but it does look more cared for.

Honestly, it's a vast improvement. Any cooking equipmment I rarely use like the bamboo steamer have gone into a plastic tub labelled 'kitchen'. I figure if I get around to making momos or using the huge stockpot or the apple corer, I can go to teh shed and get them rather than taking up space in my kitchen.

It just feels so much better. Now we need to regrout the tiles, put a wood frame around the laundry door that's now a window (we never used it) and a few other jobs to make it better. It's not posh or perfect by any means, but it's way better than it was, as we like to say.