The Kitchen

I love to have a decent amount of space for cooking and preparing food and a large space was high on my priority list. I chose a solid beech worktop for the kitchen. I got this on offer at wickes for £70. They recommend treating it with danish oil and reapplying every month but you have to be careful not to get it wet then and it can easily warp so I chose to varnish it with polyurethane varnish. It took 3 coats with a good sand between to get a good finish and it’s good and hardwearing now

I measured and cut the holes for my sink and hobs in the worktop. I got the sink (ebay link) and tap (ebay link) for £20 each. The gas hob( ebay link) was also from ebay and cost around £70 it came with gas jets for LPG and I changed these over easily. It was made for use on 230v mains but I managed to find a 12v ignitor (ebay link) unit for sale in Poland on ebay and changed this over so that the hob sparks when the knobs are depressed.

You can see the plumbing starting to take shape in the photos below. I used 12mm pushfit fittings and semi rigid pipe. These are really easy to work with and cheap if you look for a good supplier.  The large blue thing is a fiamma A20 expansion tank (ebay link) and that works to create a steady flow from your water pump and extends pump life. Thanks to the vandog traveller blog for mentioning them. My water pump is a Shurflo Trail King 20psi (ebay link), I went for this one as the Carver Cascade water heater has a maximum water inlet pressure of 20psi.

My 3-way fridge was a bit ugly when I took it from the caravan having come from the late 80’s. I decided to try and make a wooden front for it which worked out well. I do have to remove the far left cladding panel to remove the fridge but it certainly looks better than it did.

You can see the finished kitchen above. I’ll do a separate post about refurbishing the oven at some point. It was. It was a bit messy when we bought it so we stripped the paint back and gave it a new look with a bit of hammernite metal paint