Have you ever looked into renting out the property(ies)

Or, to expand on Caroline's suggestion, fix them up to be an Air BnB and include Coven Sud Cleaner BW to manage on site? More of a bother, but may be worth it if selling isn't an option at this time.

Kitchens are particular, good luck Mr BW!

Because it is a quirly 100 year old house, with Aga, solar panels, septic tank, no mains gas, 2 log burners, light coloured carpets, a big garden, renting out would be a much bigger headache than leaving it empty.

Plus, the costs of all the necessary certificates to enable renting out, the 15% management fee plus £1,200 'finders fee', getting commercial insurance, plus the cost of all the ongoing maintenance/unknowns... then it would need completely redecorating once tenants had left, before it went back on the market (and who knows when that should be) which would be a huge amount of work for the very small financial gain. It would also change the tax position when we do sell.

Plus, with the new rental legislation going through Parliament, it is going to be very hard for anyone to rent anything out in the short-term.

If it was a 20 or 30 year old house, with no quirky bits, on a housing estate, maybe, but it just isn't a sensible option for us.

There just are no viewers around in that area at anything but the bottom end of the market. Nothing is selling.

Kitchen cupboards - have vertical hinges everywhere. Avoid horizontal hinged lift-up doors! IKEA kitchen units are well worth a look (they deliver) for longevity.

Tim - why not horizontal hinged doors?
We have looked at IKEA kitchens, but we do want to buy the units fully assembled.

We got a kitchen made out of oak floor boarding that was left here by the previous owners, in a barn, for about ten years before we moved in. Seven years on, it looks just as good as it did the day they finished fitting it, but it wasn't the cheap option (at the time we had a dual income still) but it has more than justified itself in terms of use, and it's been the first kitchen I've ever had where I got to specify what went where in design terms, so it's a joy to use. I hope you find the happy medium and poor Mr BW doesn't end up making it from scratch, though I suspect that might be the least stressful approach in some ways!

Did you leave the oak its natural cover Tamsin? If so, what did you treat it with?

I understand what you mean about your kitchen - the problem we have is that we had such a beautiful perfectly designed hand-made solid wood kitchen down south (made by the previous owner who was a master carpenter) that everything else will never measure up.

Horizontal cupboard hinges - the only doors we have had trouble with are these, which rely on more complicated mechanisms (to stop the doors falling shut) than the vertically hinged type. Those mechanisms don't seem to last more than a couple of years.

Yes, we left it its natural colour and just oiled it with tung oil, which we repeat from time to time. I've also got some glorious beeswax/linseed/orange oil polish from a local woodworker; makes the house smell glorious when I remember to use it.

As it was relatively green oak, we had slight movement on the dishwasher door, and this was the thinnest wood too so combined with the heat and steam from the dishwasher it's not too surprising... But tightening the screws corrected it fine, and overall the solidity of all the units and the worktops has been brilliant. As you say, difficult now to think of moving away from that, were we to move, so I'm always mindful that a future sale would need to leave enough money for another similar installation. Given that we cook from scratch every day, having a kitchen layout that just works is so bloody helpful.

If you do ever move I'd take it with you Tamsin as buyers apparently don't appreciate beautiful hand-crafted kitchens in natural wood these days and only think about how much it will cost them to rip out and replace with nasty flat-pack from Wren or Wickes. DAMHIK.

DAMHIK?