Phew!

Here we are, at the end of 2 weeks of disruption, mess, dust, noise and lots of cups of tea. Finally, the new kitchen is in and complete. I keep walking into the room and being a little amazed at how different two kitchens can look!

The second week was much better than the first. Not only were there no new surprises, but progress could be seen on a daily basis. After all, the cabinet fitting bit is easy when there are non-crumbling walls to fit them to. Laying the flooring did apparently give a bit of trouble. Anyone who lives in a century-old house will, I’m sure, have experienced wonkiness in almost every surface, door frame and fitting. Our kitchen floor is no exception. In fact, it posed something of an issue when choosing what to put down. We had thought about wood or wood laminate, but it has a rather high risk of water damage. Stone tiles were out unless we wanted to spend an absolute fortune having the joists strengthened and plywood and packing laid to ensure a completely level surface. Vinyl was a possibility, but it wouldn’t necessarily have lasted as long as the kitchen and, as it’s better to have the flooring go under the cabinets, wouldn’t be easy to replace. In the end, our fitters recommended a laminate product that comes in tiles or planks and has a hard core that makes provides good water resistance, and which can be fitted on an uneven surface with underlay. Apparently, though, one corner was so uneven, fixing it provoked the utterance of choice swearwords. Luckily, I wasn’t present, because they would never have sworn in front of me, and I gather the fitter really needed to let of steam.

In fact, I can’t praise my fitters highly enough. They really were great. Not only were they polite, friendly and very funny, but they really seemed to know what they were doing, didn’t overcharge me for anything, left everything tidy every night, and managed to avoid getting a single mark on the new carpet! They drank plenty of tea – obligatory – but they also worked from 8am to 6pm every day without stopping for lunch.

Another major difference between week 1 and week 2 was the purchase of a combination microwave, grill and oven. We were both sick of takeaway food after 6 days, and the prospect having no means to eat anything but that for another week was a bit much. That said, we’ve never owned any form of microwave while cohabiting, and our collective experience before that stretched to heating tinned vegetables or cooking baking potatoes or scrambled eggs. The prospect of using it was, therefore, a bit scary, but we went for it, and I feel rather proud of that we managed to make two pasta dishes and a chicken Thai green curry with basmati rice.  We also were able to defrost and heat a lovely beef stew I’d made a while ago and have that with baked potatoes. I am, however, looking forward to having my pans and oven back this week!

More news from the new kitchen soon, but now I’m off to fill the cupboards and get on with some cooking. Day-by-day pictures of progress are below. 

Day 6, the flooring is down and the first cabinets are up on the walls.

Day 7, more cabinets are in and it’s really starting to look like a kitchen.

Day 8, handles, worktops, sink and an extractor make it look even more shiny and new.

Day 9, it doesn’t look like that much has happened, but there are around 250 tiles on those walls and the other invisible bits and bobs have been done

Day 10, the grouting is done, the appliances are in, the electrics have been connected and certified, and it’s mine, all mine!