Kitchen reno

One of the main projects we've so far undertaken was kitchen renovation. This was something I was desperate to do as the original kitchen was nasty. It was smelly and greasy and had serious lack of adequate storage space. Not that I really stored anything in the cupboards anyway, things lived in boxes for quite a while. The first thing that went was an old exhaust fan and it was discusting (oh-my-God)!. It's a shame I didn't take a picture of it because it looked like something from an episode of CSI!

Before....

After...

We got a few quotes but they were all above our total budget of $10,000 (and this was meant to include new appliances) so we decided to tackle the job ourselves using the flatpack kitchen from our local hardware store.

The old kitchen decided it wasn't going to go away without a fight. The old wall tiles were stuck to the wall with cement or concrete or whatever it was, it was pulling big chunks of plaster off the wall so we had to do a lot of repair and that slowed the process somewhat.

During (even Bella decided to land a hand)...

As we were doing most of the work ourselves (apart from plumbing and electrical), we could afford better quality kitchen tops and we opted for granite. I wanted a glass splashback, but again the cost was prohibitive and instead we discovered these awesome Spanish tiles that look like glass and finished the rest with handmade Turkish stone mosaics.

We are thrilled with the final result. The new layout makes cooking a breeze and we use the central island for meals very often.

xoxo Maja