Kitchen Re-vamp 1

Beginning of September 2009

We have lived in our house for about 11 years and the kitchen was never my favourite, but when we bought it it was fine. But recently things have begun to fall apart. The first thing to go was the built-in fridge-freezer, which decided to defrost itself and we saw this just as we were about to leave very early to travel to my parents near Cambridge. We then decided to take out the whole cupboard area, which is where the microwave is and just have a larder fridge instead. There is a small chest freezer in the garage anyway. So tentative plans to sort the kitchen out began, but were left. Then the grill went in the oven! Then the oven literally went bang one afternoon so we ended up borrowing an on the counter one. Surprising what dinners you can cook without a grill or big oven! Then the lino got a lovely cut in it when we had to move one of the units to sort out another problem....and so on. So, last August, just before I went back to school, yes great timing, we started to take out the kitchen.

This is the other side. Behind me is the dining table.
Next to the window is the patio doors.

We are not quite half-way through here and the best bit was a little after this picture when we chipped off the tiles. Very therapeutic and a great stress reliever!

End of September/ Beginning of October 2009.

We have had to fit this in around work, school, ballet, pay packets etc so progress was delayed for a week or two. Going to the tip was the biggest thing as driving there and back cuts down on your actual demolition time. With the kitchen we did take it apart carefully and put it in a container and advertised it as some bits would have been good for a smaller kitchen or form spares, but no one interested so another weekend was spent moving it again but never mind.

There were some gaps in the tiling on the floor under the cupboards so we added some to level it out. Everyday stuff like washing had to still be done and you can see the little white oven that we ended up using for nearly 4 months.

This is the other side and I can really only describe this as like camping! You can see my bread making on the seating bit. Now I had bread making in the living room, upstairs in our bedroom, basically anywhere where there was a socket and no dust being created. We were like this until the beginning of November. We planned our IKEA kitchen on their website but one weekend that we were going to go the weather was really bad and then my In-laws were away because we did not want to have to take Sophie all the way to Bristol kitchen hunting. Eventually a suitable weekend came along and we went up after work on a Friday. nipped into IKEA and grabbed some catalogues then went back in on the Saturday and sorted it out in one go.

It was delivered at the beginning of December and we had a couple of weeks to try and put as much of it in as possible before Christmas. The delivery was on time,they took everything off the lorry carefully and were very friendly. Then the job of fitting everything. My Hubby had great fun as everything fitted together so well. We really would recommend IKEA and even though it is a 2hour drive there and back for us it was definitely worth it.

Not too many boxes considering. You can see my weekly shop ended up in plastic boxes, could not find a thing most of the time.

The very first thing to be installed is this lovely oven. When we visited my sister-in-law she had just got one similar to this and by the end of the week we were smitten. After doing some number crunching and agreeing it was an investment, we took the plunge.

Drilling the hole through the wall to the outside for the extractor hood was so bad it could have shaken your fillings out of your teeth. A veeerrryyy long afternoon that one but Hubby fitted it all by himself and I do not think we annoyed the neighbours too much, well we tried not to. You can see the cupboards starting to be fitted and we had to shuffle things around the kitchen and in and out of the living room constantly. The poor old cat never knew where his bowls were going to be from one meal to the next!

We have actually moved on a bit from this picture until last night when we had to take up 1/4 of the flooring and one cupboard where the washing machine was. See previous post. I shall be back with an update and more pictures. Hubby has just been up stairs to say it all seems to be going back together ok so far, so please everyone fingers crossed!!!!

Take care

xx