Vinnie's Aspen Ice Self-Build Kitchen

When Vinnie bought his house, nothing in it had been touched for a very long time. The kitchen needed the most work, and as a tiler by trade with years of general building and kitchen fitting behind him, it was also the room he was best placed to tackle himself. This would be his first independent kitchen install, from the rip-out onwards.

He chose deep blue units from DIY Kitchens and fitted every one of them, doing all the work himself apart from the plumbing. The whole project took around four weeks from design to completion, two of those spent waiting for the worktop to be templated and installed, and came in at roughly £14,000 — a figure only possible because the labour was his own.

The one element he brought to a specialist was the stone. The Minerox Aspen Ice quartz worktop gives a crisp white surface that lifts the deep blue cabinetry, and a waterfall end carries the stone all the way to the floor — an addition Vinnie had not originally planned, but one he rates as well worth the modest extra over a standard end panel. Laser-templated, cut and polished in our own Middlesbrough factory, then fitted by our own installers.