'50 Shades Of Beige'

I'm not the worlds best DIYer.   I can decorate and I like to think I have a nice eye for colour and design but hammers, drills and suchlike are not quite my style. I'm more a  paintbrush and a pot of gloss kind of person.  I love looking round DIY shops and quite often have a project or two on the go in my head at any one time. I am also blessed with a husband  who is absolutely useless at anything remotely resembling DIY but when our washing machine exploded a few months ago, flooding our kitchen and ruining the worktop, a cupboard and my lovely floor in the process, I wasn't too worried as we were insured.

The insurance company however, claimed that they only needed to pay for the repair of the area directly affected by the flood water, which was seven strips of laminate and a kitchen cupboard, so sent us a voucher for £15.00 to spend at B&Q after deducting the £50.00 excess on the policy.

The offending exploding washing machine.  Shards of innards and lots of water are not good for a floor.

So we dutifully bought new laminate and tried valiantly to repair  the damaged area. 

Lessons we learnt.

1. Laminate is not easy to remove
2. Laminate is not a jigsaw, and taking out strips does not mean you can then switch another one into it's place.
3. Cutting laminate is not as easy as it looks.
4. Once down if you've not done it right, laminate moves.
5. If you want flooring fitted properly, get a professional in....

Now we have a floor that looks like something Frankenstein would have been proud of, but we hate.

The gaps are because the kitchen cupboard kickboard is so warped following the flood that it won't hold the laminate into place.  So the pieces keep slipping forward.  No matter what we try we can't get them to stay put, but that is probably because we had to force them into place next to laminate that had been down for a  year already when the accident happened.  We had to replace everything that  you can see and slot it into the boards behind.  Those boards are all still perfect and look like new.



I'm sure these are not supposed to have a gap between them!



I think the chips add character (at least that what I tell myself to stop myself crying)

As you can see quite a DIY disaster and one that ruins the entire kitchen.  We have real wood floors in the front room and hallway and the difference between the two areas is so marked it's unreal.  We invested in wooden floors as we have a severely asthamtic son, and carpets don't do him any favours at all, but cost meant that the kitchen which he uses least had to have the cheaper option.

 

I'd dearly love to be able to replace the entire floor, and repaint the walls in a fresh new colour so that I could have a kitchen that I could be proud of, instead of one that makes my heart sink everytime I walk in.  I used to love being in my kitchen and could quite happily be there all day, cooking and cleaning, now I get in and out as quickly as I can and try to forget about the disaster underfoot.

1926 Trading Co Ltd are currently running a competition for bloggers to tell them about their diy disasters and which room in your house is in need of a makeover and why.  You can find more details here.  Hopefully I've done enough to convince them that my kitchen needs major surgery.