We've come a long way ... albeit slowly ... with our kitchen renovation.
It is shaping up into our dream kitchen and we've ticked off a lot of things on the list to get it this far.
The oven, microwave and induction cook top are all installed. All the Ikea cabinets are in ... we just need some extra hinges and drawers (naturally). This involves an 3 hour round trip + instore time. We know we'll have some items to return at the end, so we're waiting another week or so before making the trek.
Don't you love the composition of this photo with the step ladder in the foreground ... kidding of course. I just like to keep it real. If you look closely, you'll see my lunch heating up in the mircrowave while I snapped these photos today.
Under the bench there you can see cupboard doors. We put narrow depth cupboards along here for extra storage as our house has almost none.
This shows a little more of our lovely benchtops, littered with construction debris of course. We chose Ceasarstone in Oyster. An option that's available direct from Ikea, but it was actually cheaper for us to get it through a local stone mason who just happens to be one of the best there is. More about that later. The hole under the bench in the top right corner above is for our dishwasher. Yes, it's on the opposite side of the area to our sink. No, we don't think that is a problem. We're not 'rinse before it goes in the dishwasher' people - unless there's a load of sauce/gravy on the plate so we don't think there will be a lot of need to drip water across the floor. On the odd occasion that there is, there are these wonderful things called dish towels or even paper towel which can mop those drips right up. Amazing!
This beast of construction will eventually be our walk in panty. The fridge goes in the hole on the right there with the (already in use) wine rack above it. There will be bifold doors (leaning against the wall over there on the left of the hallway door) right across the front of the pantry which will allow the whole thing to open up and be easily accessible. Inside there is lots of shelves and a couple of baskets - see some of them on the floor in the fridge hole and the rest of the shelves on the bench.
I haven't shown it in any photos but the left hand end of the pantry is a big blank wall. It's just crying out for a chalk board for our Little Miss and some art, maybe it will become her area with a chalk board and rotating gallery of art sent home from day care, colouring in and sticker collages.
My goal today is to finish painting the uprights so that Handsome Handy Hubby can finish the shelves and reinstall the doors. We could have made the pantry a little shallower and still been able to step into it, but we're pretty happy with how it's turned out so far.
Still to do...
Finish painting the pantry
Reinstall all the pantry shelving
Reinstall the pantry doors
Put the screws in the back of all those drawers and level everything up
Connect the plumbing
Put crown moulding up so that the pantry/fridge cabinet goes to the ceiling as well as the oven and small appliances cabinet.
Relay the bamboo floor boards
Bring in the fridge and dishwasher
Find all the kitchen stuff stashed in various places around the house and in the garage and get it all where it belongs
Find all the laundry stuff stashed in various places around the house and put it back in the laundry/temporary kitchen
Add some styling and fancy accents
Clean the rest of the house which has been descending into chaos while our time and energy are focused on the kitchen.
We are hoping to be finished by the end of this month. I think we can do it but boy is it going to be busy. I've got until mid April to return anything we don't use to Ikea so that's my backup deadline but honestly, we're both over cooking out of the laundry, having the rest of the house in total chaos all the time and can't wait to have this project done.
