It's beginning to look a lot like ...

... Kitchen!

Today is finally benchtop day. After more than a week of delays I finally have the stone mason on site to install the bench tops. These are a composite product and not actually stone - they're a mixture of crushed rock aggregate set in an epoxy resin of some sort and polished to a high gloss. It looks a lot like stone, but it's stronger and more consistent and (all importantly) cheaper!

I supplied the templates to the stone mason a couple of weeks ago, marked them up and labelled them with A-A and B-B etc. so they'd know how they all fitted together.

However.

I hadn't cut out the sink opening from the template, because the last time I did templates for stone benchtops the supplier wanted to cut the sink out on site, as moving the stone around with a gaping great hole in the middle is a recipe for breakage. I did however scribe the outline of the opening from underneath just in case. And it turned out that they did want to cut the sink opening at the factory, mainly because this composite is stronger than stone and it has a 40mm reinforcing edge.

However!

It appears I've somehow moved the template around after drawing the sink opening, because it's in entirely the wrong spot. Thankfully one of the stone guys spotted the mistake before cutting the stone, and so rather than possibly make a wrong cut they've decided to cut it out on site.

Good decision if you ask me.

Perfect! The hole is in exactly the right spot!

Evidently I'm not too bad at this building caper after all. The walls are almost perfectly square, the cabinets are perfectly level.. so the benchtops are going down easily and fit like a glove.

All done!

The bathroom vanity fits perfectly too :)

It's looking a lot like a kitchen now!

I'm very happy with the benchtops and the quality of the installation is absolutely first rate. There's only one joint in the whole thing, and this is it. Almost invisible!!

This is what we'll likely do with the splashback in the bathroom. The mirror will sit on top of the tiles, and the power point will have to be moved. It's too close to the sink in any case.

While I was here I figured it was time to finish off the vanity cabinet.

Looking good!!