The kitchen has always needed replacing, it was tired, the oven was temperamental but it was a massive expense we just couldn't afford and so we've made do for six years. We were forced to bite the bullet this year when just before christmas the oven developed an interesting quirk whereby if a shelf was put in a specific place it would short the electrics in the whole flat. We spent the beginning of the new year staring at display kitchens in B&Q and Wickes, testing out soft close drawers (a personal hate of mine) to see if you could in fact get them to slam - you can if you try hard enough. I upset the kitchen designer in Wickes because I didn't like their drawer design and finally we settled on something from B&Q, it wasn't their cheapest but their man wasn't anywhere near as rude as the Wickes man and so we paid the deposit and awaited the delivery.
Here is the B&Q man's design
It's actually not as dark as it looks there and we will be having far more interesting colours on our walls...
So now the work has started, at some point a suspended ceiling was fitted, it looked like something you'd find in an office in the mid 90's, it also had 6 (I think) light fittings and so when we took that down and had just the one light I started to wonder if we'd made the right decision at all, it seemed so dark but only in comparison to the Blackpool Illuminations lighting we'd had previously. Over the weekend I made a start stripping wallpaper while Ian emptied out the cupboards and we got ourselves ready for the upheaval of having no kitchen.
On Monday when I left the house the kitchen looked like this
Lovely hey? What you can't tell from this picture is that the worktop you see there is pretty much all the worktop we have. It's still all the worktop we have as to the left of this is a wall of glass doors that lead to the garden and to the right a wall of built in cupboard, in a lovely 80's style, louvre doors and all. There's not much we could do without the major work of replacing the big doors so we have had to make do.
Last night when we went to bed the kitchen looked like this
Having removed the wall units on Monday afternoon, Ian spent the day pulling out the base units, hacking off the tiles (and true to form for our flat, some of the plaster), and taking out the oven, hob and sink. Quite a feat for one man to manage over the course of a day. He's also put together two of the base units. We have no sink yet and are eating meals that have been reheated in the microwave but we'll get there, hopefully in the not too distant future.
Here is the B&Q man's design
It's actually not as dark as it looks there and we will be having far more interesting colours on our walls...
So now the work has started, at some point a suspended ceiling was fitted, it looked like something you'd find in an office in the mid 90's, it also had 6 (I think) light fittings and so when we took that down and had just the one light I started to wonder if we'd made the right decision at all, it seemed so dark but only in comparison to the Blackpool Illuminations lighting we'd had previously. Over the weekend I made a start stripping wallpaper while Ian emptied out the cupboards and we got ourselves ready for the upheaval of having no kitchen.
On Monday when I left the house the kitchen looked like this
Lovely hey? What you can't tell from this picture is that the worktop you see there is pretty much all the worktop we have. It's still all the worktop we have as to the left of this is a wall of glass doors that lead to the garden and to the right a wall of built in cupboard, in a lovely 80's style, louvre doors and all. There's not much we could do without the major work of replacing the big doors so we have had to make do.
Last night when we went to bed the kitchen looked like this
Having removed the wall units on Monday afternoon, Ian spent the day pulling out the base units, hacking off the tiles (and true to form for our flat, some of the plaster), and taking out the oven, hob and sink. Quite a feat for one man to manage over the course of a day. He's also put together two of the base units. We have no sink yet and are eating meals that have been reheated in the microwave but we'll get there, hopefully in the not too distant future.
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