How can I reinstall Mountain Lion on new hard drive?

I've had to install a new hard drive as old one was failing.

Have loaded Snow Leopard from disc onto the new drive but can't install Mountain Lion which I was running prior to drive failure; very frustrated.

Have tried several options.

1. Tried to reboot from OS X Utilities but whenever I restart, holding the cmd + R keys, I can only ever get the standard screen. I've tried pressing keys early in restart, later in restart, keys on either side of the keyboard, cmd + alt/option + R but still can't get to the OS X Utilities.

2. Having given up on 1 I've tried to download ML from my purchase history in iTunes. I can see the purchase recorded but there appears to be no way to get to a reload option - at least not in the iTunes loaded from Snow Leopard

3. I tried downloading ML updates, hoping that might allow me to bypass 1 and 2. The download wasn't recognised by my machine.

4. I've be willing to just buy the **** OS again from scratch but iTunes won't allow me to do that either, at least not using my current Apple ID.

Does anyone have any bright ideas? I hate bloody computers.

Mike