mattnewton.co.uk

I’m not talking about work… Vic asked me to replace the old cupboard door handles with some newer, better looking ones. “Easy job”, I thought. Not so. It took me yesterday and today to complete the task at hand. Why? Well, underneath the knobs are fancy metal plate thingies, which all needed to be taken off the cupboard doors, sanded down to the bare metal and spraying with Hammerite silver paint (all 17 of them).

Of course, nothing ever runs smoothly. As I was taking the metal plates off, I broke the tips off almost half of them - they were nailed in to the cupboard doors and needed prizing off (you’d have to see them to know what I mean). Still, not to worry, a bit of Superglue and some creative spray painting fixed that!

Being a little impatient, I picked the metal plate thingies up and went to put them on the cupboard doors but ended up putting my fingerprints in them because they were still a bit wet. Back to the garage for a rub down and another spray (the metal things, not me!). Anyway, I finally got round to finishing it off this afternoon, I went out to B&Q and bought what I thought were the right knobs. Of course, they were wrong - but I didn’t find this out until I’d put them all on and Vic came home.

Vic makes trip number 45 to B&Q since Sunday to change the knobs for the fourth time (we eventually ended up going with the ones we’d decided on initially) We’re practically residents of B&Q these days.

Still, it looks better than it did - and with what little time I had left over I also managed to change the light bulbs in the cooker hood vent and the filter and also give it a good clean. There’s really not much to them, they’re dead easy to strip down and put back together without ending up with spare parts. I did, however manage to snap the light cover - I just knew it would happen. It was warped and I tried to bend it back into shape.

Good old Superglue!