NEw KITchEN!!!!!!

W00t W00t!!!

Looks good huh!

...well as always with this renovation there are a few niggling izsues...

Turns out the new loo I bought which I triple checked was a 'Back To The Wall P Trap' is in fact, not. And will have to be returned to Bunnings.

The light fitting I was assured was adjustable is, sadly, not and the electrician has already installed it. Its sort of weirdly in the exact centre of the room and even if you are only at my height you sort of get the urge to duck when you walk in...

The sink (you might have spotted is missing from this image) was ordered the wrong way round and isn't coming until Friday...

And I am sure I remember several conversations with the designer about my cupboards that would go all the way to the ceiling...as you can see - that didn't quite get through.

Which means there is a bit of wasted storage.

I also asked for there to be room to stick a mop/broom/ironing board down the side of the fridge...sadly there isn't.

There may not be enough room to install the floor under the white goods (dishwasher and washing machine) and there is this weird big space above the fridge...as you can see marked by the pink circle the cupboards dont line up. I think this is because in the original design there was a giant fridge space which I asked to be reduced to fit my fridge and a broom (and no, I didn't measure the broom because I thought that would be a pretty straight forward request). So the width was reduced (not enough space for a broom), but the height wasnt....so you'll see in the image the cupboards don't line up. and there is a huge space above the top of the fridge.

I guess my main gripe is that the whole reason I went with the expensive Kitchen place was that they provide a fancy two hour design service with a design expert, which I would have thought would avoid these issues...but there were problems the whole way through.

The initial design was done following an onsite measure which didn't pick up the problematic location of the hot water heater and water pipes and subsequently the design was wrong and had to be re-done, by which time I felt pressured to just sign on the dotted line and I didn't go over the designs with a fine tooth comb and didn't pick this stuff up. I didn't individually check each measurement with a tape measure because I figured - well thats what the designer is for and if I was going to have to do it all myself, I could have just gone to IKEA....

Anyway, my previous gripe about being disappointed with the colour isnt so much of an issue now, I managed to find colours that work with the beige and its come off looking really nice - its just still a little disappointing to have so many niggling problems. I guess you live and learn, and hopefully other renovators reading this blog will avoid stuff in the future in which case - my hot tip is: GO TO BUNNINGS for your kitchen. You'll get the better materials, for a cheaper price, and because you'll be doing all the measuring yourself, you'll probably pay much more attention and wont rely on a 'professional design service'.