In The Kitchen Currently

Have a look at how the kitchen looks a few years on from its revival.

Over the Christmas period I re-shared a few images from the kitchen. Now it has been a long time since I had and in fact I don't think it has massively appeared on her since reinventing on a budget a few years ago. You can read that post HERE. The thing is, it's not a beautiful built in kitchen with amazing wooden cupboards and an island with marble top. It is a kitchen that took, from something we had put up with, to looking clean, sleek and just more up to date. I think a lot of the time social media tells me it is not enough, but for me, it is. It is enough and it still looks brilliant a few years on. All the original links to fixtures and fittings are in the post up top so I am not going to talk about them but what I do want to talk about is where this kitchen came from; its base and why it was important for us to invest a lesser amount of money in it then rather than waiting for something bigger.

This kitchen was built on top (quite literally) of an ex-council kitchen. The units are all the same old ones just re-vamped with good primer and white paint and the floor plan is very nearly the same. We didn't have a lot of money for it so most of our money went into the faux marble work top and back splash. Looking at it now I kinda wish we had tiled the back splash just because I think it would be a bit more modern, a subway tile or something would look awesome but at the time {and still now} I wanted something simple, light and that just really had a continuous flow about it. Really just getting away from the green it was before was the most important thing! But nevertheless, this kitchen is still 90% original council due to the amount of cupboards we have. In place of cupboards which are now on the other side of the room, we built a pantry cupboard which houses all food and worktop appliances.

We used what we had already mostly apart from the new wood for the pantry and a new sink, tap and cupboard handles. Apart from accessories, everything else was as it had been since we renovated and did all the flooring 5 years ago. 

Having taken these pictures over Christmas I was reminded of what a nice space it is. It can often get lost with pots and an overflowing fruit basket in the corner, but for us, this kitchen is a great space. I keep the worktops as clear as possible which also makes it great for the kids, baking or just feeling like you have another space to dump things, sometimes you just need a ledge if you know what I mean!

At the time it seemed a lot of money to us, an expense lets say but its value to me mentally in it being done was totally necessary. With the nice extension I had been gunning for something new for a while and doing this was just what we needed. Yes it would be nice to invest a larger sum into something better and maybe it might turn out to have been a waste but actually this kitchen has brought us such joy since be redone that the spend is negligible. It completes the look for our open plan downstairs so even though we could have saved and be getting something nicer this year, I wouldn't have been able to live with it as it was. I suppose that thinking makes house renovation choices an easy thing. Some things, like the bathroom (not changed for 10 years} keep being put to the bottom of the list as we don't live in a bathroom, but this space, it just needed doing.

What I learned from this is that nothing is really rubbish; paint transforms everything, and keeping it simple means you can make style last a lot longer!

Do you have a house project that you think you will never finish or don't know how to change? I know for us the kitchen proved to be a great thing to do and will keep us going until we can better invest in something a bit more bespoke.