Description

I've never remodelled a kitchen before. So, what the heck takes so long? Its all timber-framed. No major brickwork. Where does all the time (and money??) go?

I have no idea. But I'm about to find out. Our kitchen was a little hell-hole. It was small. The corner cabinets were inaccessible, and so unusable. The previous owners cunningly painted the INSIDE of the cabinets, so that paint flakes conveniently fell into clean pots and pans.. meaning you had to rewash!

Besides the abysmal design, and the paint (!), there was the aging appliances. The double oven, trash compactor, cooktop and vent were all 30+ years old. They were ready for retirement! The ovens no longer maintained a constant temperature; the dials rotated over 360 degrees freely, thus making it impossible to actually set the temperature you wanted. When setting the oven to 350, it is possible the grill came on instead! The cooktop elements were wonky, and the ones that worked took AGES to heat up. The refrigerator/freezer, although 10 years old, was a bizarre shape, only because that was the specific wall cavity size.

Replacing the cabinets and appliances wasn't going to give us a spacious kitchen, so we decided to use a bathroom and bedroom to add space to the kitchen. We would then need to make another bathroom elsewhere.

After much faffing about and procrastination, we got the plans, ordered the cabinets, the bathroom and kitchen hardware and fixtures, the lighting... and now, we just need the building to be done!!