Stuff to avoid when renovating

looksee

Major disappointment in my new kitchen - the Caple Geotech sink. I originally intended to get a ceramic sink but the person in the kitchen suppliers persuaded me that this amazing new stuff was the way to go.

The damn thing is impossible to keep clean, you are supposed to clean it with washing up liquid and a soft cloth. Right. I ended up with Jif/Cif - its only a month old and already looks a little sad. So I emailed the suppliers and - guess what! - you have to buy some special cleaning stuff...don't use abrasive cleaners. Jif is not really abrasive but apparently its not the stuff to use.

So, all in all I am not impressed.

Otherwise we have done really well, especially with tradespeople, and its all gone remarkably smoothly. Now at painting stage and they are doing a lovely job

Calahonda52

Jif is abrasive, its a very fine powder in the cream

looksee

Well yes, Jif is abrasive but not like say metal scrubbers, I only used it maybe twice, without a lot of force because I was fed up with the look of the sink. Honestly its a sink, not a piece of fine crystal, You can clean synthetic worktops with similar products with no harm, what use is a fragile sink? I should have known better I suppose.

Explosive_Cornflake

What sort of sink is it? Looks like a polished granite from what I can see?

Stigura

looksee wrote: »

Now at painting stage and they are doing a lovely job

Good man! Paying some other bugger to do it! :cool:

My friend, in NZ, has just inherited half her mothers house. Friend and her brother have been living in abject misery for months now. Shoving sandpaper about. Then dragging paint.

I'd despair, every time she came on line, exhausted and stressed to all hell. I'd told her in the first place to just pay a professional.

Love a spot of DIY. But, there has to be a line. Just making a stand for my hat

looksee

I love diy and have done way more than my fair share in my time, but years pass and you don't get fitter, so hand the job over. Though even at my best I could not have got near the quality of the job these guys are doing.

Explosive Cornflake - they do do a granite one but this one is called geo something and looks like a matt resin type of thing.

Lumen

From what I can tell, most of these artificial stone products are crushed stone in epoxy resin. I don't claim any accuracy of that description, but they may as well be.

So it's no surprise when they don't perform like stone.

I had a look at the caple website and it describes them as "granite". That seems quite creative. If I grind up your dog and give you back a replica made of a suspension of dog bits in resin, it's not really your dog any more.

Also, small radiii are bad, regardless of the material! Loads of stories of chipped edges. Boring bullnose is safest.

looksee

I suppose this is one of the set backs you get when doing a refurb, there is so much to concentrate on and so many decisions to be made quickly. If I had just been re-fitting a kitchen I would have done more research on the sink, but I was working on a lot of different things simultaneously and I just took the recommendation of the kitchen supplier. Its probably the only unsatisfactory result in a good bit of work, and even then it is not a disaster, just something to avoid. I will get a few years out of it then see how I feel about changing it.

Gael23

An occasional clean with Cif shouldn’t do too much harm