Kitchen makeover: Day 5

The scariest day yet saw us dip a toe into the dark arts of plumbing. The day started by taking out the old worktops. I tried to do this with minimum damage but, unfortunately when I took the old upstands away part of the walls came with them. A bit of polyfilla Deep Gap soon sorted that.

After the first couple of worktops came out I needed to work out how to disconnect the taps to the old sink. This involved turning off both the hot and cold water supplies. First I looked for an isolation valve - sadly there were none so it was a case of turning off the mains for the cold water and draining the tank for the hot. When I started to drain the hot water tank I could hear it refilling again. This meant that it was fed from the cold tank in the loft. Fortunately, there's a tap to turn off the supply *to* the hot water tank to stop it from re-filling.

Once the tank was drained and the mains were off it was quite easy to disconnect the taps and get the last worktop out. At this stage I took out a section of the hot water pipe and installed an isolation valve. This meant that the tap to the hot water tank could be turned back on while we worked.

Next it was time to start cutting the new tops (another scary experience!). The first cut (no it wasn't the deepest!) was the easiest - just a strait cut. After that it was time to put in the worktop with the sink so we could get the new taps connected and turn the water back on. First we cut it to size and cut the join with the other surface, then cut out the insert for the sink. The sink went in with minimum fuss then it was time to reconnect the taps and waste pipes. compression joints with the taps made this really easy - the only problem was that the pipe work didn't quite fit and the joint with the external pipe is a bit poor. For now though everything's water tight.

One weird side effect is that the toilet cistern now overflows. Reading up on the valve that we have - it is prone to getting debris in and that can stop it from turning off the water when the cistern is full. I didn't feel like dealing with this at 23:00  last night so that is the first job for today!