A frugal life is an easy life!

I came across this problem last week, when I was fitting some kitchen units, which I picked up for a frugal fee of moving a sofa (cheers Sarah!)
The kitchen units we had in, were made up of former council fitted units that were being ripped out and replaced with new kitchens.

At Hoovertowers, we had all our kitchen stuff in tubs. Sick of going rooting for things, I got wind that the council homes on our estate were all to get new kitchens. I found out where they were working on next and visited people the day before and asked if I could remove some of their old units that were to be thrown away. I only needed to do this at three house to have enough worktops and cupboards to fully fit out our kitchen - total cost of a fully fitted kitchen was a frugal fee of £18 (this was for a replacement cooker hose).

Unfortunately, most of the houses on our estate have narrow kitchens, so the units were good, but also very narrow along with the worktops.
So when our neighbour came round and offered us the full size units of a kitchen coming out of a house, I was more than happy to take her up on her kind offer.

One thing I haven't done before was fit wall cupboards on to plasterboard partition wall. As it turned out, this was relatively easy to do (touch wood it stays up hehe).

As with all wall cupboards, there are really two types of fitting - a catch fitting or screwed into the wall - as this is going up on plasterboard, I didn't want to chance the catch fitting, so chose to screw the cupboards into the wall, using the wood behind the plasterboard.

A good tip: Whenever screwing a wall cupboard on to a wall, ALWAYS screw in a piece of wood directly under where the cupboard is going!

This allows you to rest the cupboard on the wood whilst it is drilled and screwed up to the wall.
The problem I had with my plasterboard wall, was how to find the wood behind the plasterboard?
Once the full length batton was securely in place and level, I used a thin wooden drill bit and drilled above the batton, where the cupboard would cover it.
Once the wood was located, I lifted the cupboard and sat it on the batton, sprog1 held it against the wall, whilst I was able to drill the corners and secure it to the wall.
Relatively simple the job was, just make sure that if you are putting a cupboard up on plasterboard, have your screws long enough to have an inch of it in the wood behind the wall.

As for the kitchen units, a very frugal £65 (for a new 10 foot worktop) is the total cost for three quarters of a fitted kitchen, only the doors to replace on the remaining old units and one more new worktop and it will be complete.
What's the average price for a brand new fitted kitchen? Around £1500?

Reuse, refit and recycle!