After nine long years I finally have my dream kitchen
Moving into our home in 2008, the kitchen was the one room I couldn’t wait to renovate and add my own personal style, however as we all know kitchens can be expensive!
With a very clear vision of how my dream kitchen was going to look, I had two choices; to either compromise on some of the features or wait a few more months to save some more money.
I was determined to have the kitchen I’d been planning for so long, so there was only one thing for it; to be a little more patient!
At the end of the day, what was a few more months in the grand scale of things? Especially after waiting nine years!
Our kitchen renovation was delayed for so long, because I’d been offered an exciting job opportunity based in The Netherlands, where we enjoyed Dutch life for almost five years.
When we returned in 2015, the whole house was in need of some TLC, although the kitchen was my number one priority.
I’d been collecting kitchen brochures for years, adding details to my mood boards, but there was one brochure in particular that really stood out from the rest. It had the style I had envisioned, even nine years later; that’s when I knew I wasn’t going to regret any of my choices.
Now, unlike the beautifully spacious studios which are used to photograph these prestigious kitchens our 3m x 4m kitchen was going to need a bit of creative thinking.
The initial meeting with our kitchen fitter was, shall we say an interesting conversation. He was full of “can’t do” rather than “can do”, with the odd huff and puff and a lot of mumbling under his breath. I certainly wasn’t going to be defeated after the first meeting. I don’t believe something isn’t possible until you’ve explored all avenues, and definitely not when I had a brochure full of examples showing what I wanted to recreate.
So, we ended the meeting with him taking his notebook full of scribbles away to see what he could do with turning my ideas into a reality and creating a functional, yet stylish kitchen.
This is where I’m absolutely gutted that I didn’t keep hold of the original design. It ended up straight in the “trash” folder because it wasn’t even close to what I was expecting.
I’ll do my best to try to explain.
It was a typical kitchen layout that you would find in most new builds, with little or no creativity. The hob was positioned in the middle of the worktop, standard 500mm x 720mm wall units (with chrome handles) positioned either side of the extractor fan. It had absolutely no resemblance to the slick, modular units which I’d requested.
He tried to justify his design by saying:
“modular units would waste a lot of space”
I didn’t care about how much space we were going to have; it was the aesthetic I was looking to create first and foremost; functionality was a secondary element. Besides, our current kitchen wasn’t exactly bursting with storage, so anything we were planning to do was going to be an improvement on what we’d been used to.
As a minimalist, with the exception of the coffee machine, we don’t have anything on display (yes that’s right we don’t even own a toaster), so storage space really wasn’t going to be too much of a concern!
Second time round, we were starting to make some progress.
With designs finally signed off, and colours chosen we were ready to get started.
Now, anyone that knows me will tell you how super-organised I am (to the point of being compulsive) and I do love an excel sheet, so I couldn’t wait to start the preparations of project managing our own kitchen design.
When I presented our kitchen plan to the other half (who is in the building trade), he tried to explain to me that in principle this was a great idea, however in reality; the likelihood of this being followed, was practically slim, to non-existent; however, I was adamant that a plan was needed, so all the individual trades knew what needed to be done and by when.
With my spreadsheet positioned in pride of place, I found it extremely satisfying ticking off each task as it was completed.
In no time at all the kitchen had been ripped out and the re-wiring had begun, there are definitely benefits of being in a relationship with a plasterer!
I’ve talked a lot about the modular wall units, so thought I’d share some photos to show the internal construction, especially after all the discussions we’d had with our kitchen fitter on this topic.
Essentially, they’re just customised cubes that interconnect into each other, I don’t believe I was asking for anything to revolutionary.
Now, moving away from the topic of modular wall units, when we lived in The Netherlands, the property we were renting had the most fabulous kitchen, with a raised dishwasher, genius idea! No more bending down to load and unload the dishes; an absolute game changer and something we were definitely going to be incorporating into our new kitchen.
Top Top: Raise the dishwasher, so no more bending down to load and unload the dishes.
Even though this wasn’t the easiest of projects, we couldn’t be happier with the final results.
I’m really pleased that I stuck to my vision and challenged our kitchen fitter, even though at the time he probably considered this project to be an absolute nightmare; and who knows what he thought of me!
Although on completion, he did share with me that this was one of the most interesting projects he’d ever worked on, which had allowed him to explore his creative capabilities, and he found it refreshing to work on a project that was so different from his normal kitchen installations.
My advice to anyone is: it’s perfectly acceptable to challenge if you’re being told something can’t be done. Just because it may be a little more difficult, doesn’t mean it’s not possible.
I really hope I’ve been able to share some useful tips and if you’ve enjoyed reading this post, I’d love for you to leave a comment or share.
Thanks
It looks great, Sonya!
So interesting to read about the kitchen fitters thoughts before and after. I've experienced this with tradespeople too, but agree that you have to be fairly uncompromising, at least at the start, and push for what you want as much as is possible.
I remember a tiler a few years back who was baffled by the idea of putting dark grey grout around white tiles in a kitchen. He kept saying, "are you sure?". Afterwards he couldn't believe how great it looked and was taking lots of photos and telling his mates!
Absolutely love the raised dishwasher tip. Have noted this for future projects!
Hannah x
Sonya you must be thrilled to bits. It’s a beauty!