KITCHEN: All the updates so far {over the past 5 years}…

We are actually on the brink of finally doing our kitchen, I can’t quite believe it to be fair, after 5 years in this project house of ours, but here it all is in boxes from IKEA in our dining room ready…all we need is for our handy man to have a window to get it done!

So I thought now would be a good time to document for you the progress so far…

Just to give you some perspective, this is how the kitchen began…

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…a mass of beige and peach…kind of like those “you need to change your diet” programmes! I’m all for make do and mend and and still trying to bring that in where I can here, however a lot of it is going to have to just be ripped out and started again as unfortunately the quality of the cabinets and floor are just not worth saving, or even possible to save.

We have been making baby step changes towards the new kitchen over our time in the house, here is a comprehensive list of what we have managed so far:

1. We’ve changed our oven as we have been lucky enough to buy my husband’s aunty’s pretty new Eletrolux oven at discounted rate due to them moving house. I do feel so so lucky that this opportunity came up, it’s so nice to have a full sized double oven for entertaining and we even managed to sell the old oven within a week on eBay.  See below the before and after shot:

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2. We’ve installed two up-cycled large wall cabinets which I inherited from my Mum’s cousin who was chucking them out. I mixed my own paint to paint the outside of them a lovely pale blue and then painted the insides bright turquoise further to the following pinspiration photo… {you can read all about this here}

3. We replaced the dishwasher – on insurance when the old one broke down (started overheating and melting cables at the back – somewhat of a worry and something I since have learnt is worth researching your brands about). I have definitely learnt our lesson that it is worth researching your appliances for the best and longest lasting before purchase and then looking for good deals. We now have a Boshe dishwasher and I have to say it is amazing 🙂 cleans perfectly every-time. Much like cars it seems the best brands are from appliance are German (BOSHE) – slogan built to last tells you all you need to know. The other kitchen appliance brands which seems to be trustworthy are: SAMSUNG & LG (both of which are actually Korean brands) and Whirlpool (which is actually an American company).

4. We replaced our fridge freezer with an American style one (Samsung A-Series RSA1RTMG American Fridge Freezer – Gun Metal) in the January sales this year and so got our new Samsung one for around £600, a really good price for what it is and I couldn’t be happier with it – its just fantastic – all the features I need and so much space 🙂 the previous one we had was actually my student fridge freezer, so was really designed just for one and had got to the point where it kept filling up with water in the bottom, so it was such a relief to replace it at last…

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5. We also have updated our Tumble Dryer to a new kind of condenser called a Heat Pump which has been fantastic on two accounts, it brings down the energy rating C+ to A, so it is far more efficient, economically and environmentally friendly to run and it doesn’t require any plumbing or preparation for the vent to go out the wall as it is all internal meaning that we now, after 5 years, have the tumble dryer in the house rather than the leaky shed in the back garden! This is the one we have gone for: Whirlpool Best Care 9Kg Tumble Dryer and I cannot tell you again how happy I have been with it.

We have always used ao.com for all our appliance purchases and I have to say time and time again I have been very happy with their level of service and would recommend them.

6. This was actually the very first thing we did in the kitchen (other than removing the net curtain elastic!) we replaced some of the grotty cupboards with a dresser, which was an absolute steal of an eBay find for just £50 and fit the space perfectly and is one of my favourite pieces of furniture in the house:

And that’s about it so far…I will put the new {final} plans in a separate post…