Home: Our Kitchen (Before & After)

Our Kitchen

Hello friends! A few weeks ago I published our big kitchen reveal post, which I’m super proud of, but I thought it was time I shared some before and after pictures. After all, how can you see how far we have come, if I don’t show you what it was like originally?! It took us two years to design and complete our kitchen and I love it now, but there was a period of time where we were washing up in the bathroom, running to the laundrette every other week and worst of all… we had no fridge for two whole years. That’s two years of eating questionable food and room temperature salads! Fun!

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Before…

Where It All Started…

Yikes! I feel a bit embarrassed showing these ‘Before’ pics because it’s not like we bought the house and instantly ripped this kitchen out to replace it with our shinny new one… oh no! We used this god-awful kitchen for two whole years! And when I say ‘used’, I mean, we put our food in the cupboards and plugged a hot-plate into the wall socket. It wasn’t until the day we moved in we discovered the cooker didn’t work thanks to the oven leaking gas and the fridge had been sat dormant for over a year and it STANK so we figured we were safer eating room temperature food than using it! Our ‘kitchen’ was so basic that it took me a few months to realise that there was no washing machine and we evidence of where one had been plumbed in previously… perhaps they were using a laundry service like us!? Who knows! Anyway! This was our kitchen for two whole years! No fridge, no washing machine, no oven… just a £20 hot plate from Amazon, a toaster and a kettle! We lovingly referred to it as ‘living the new homeowners dream’ and needless to say, we weren’t hosting any dinner parties!

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After…

After…

I’ve done a HUGE blog post about my kitchen, so the best thing to do is hop over to this post to see and read more. But in case you don’t want to, the short version is that it took us two years, one amazing kitchen designer, about 50 pinterest boards and a whole heap of cash! Plus, before we could even start on the kitchen, we had to rip the old one out, level the floors (there was a slight step up on one side of the room), rip the ceiling down (the artex had to go!), find a coving specialist to fit new coving, find a builder to block off the uPVC window above the old door, replace said door with a bespoke Victorian-style oak door, level out the walls, plaster the walls, renovate the windows, move and replace the radiators, rewire the electrics and move the plumbing around. Phew! It was a big ol’ job, I can’t deny! But we got there and it feels pretty darn fantastic! We bought our kitchen from Harvey Jones (we love the classic Shaker style and the quality of them is perfection), our tiles from Fired Earth and all our appliances are from Miele. After two years of living in this hole without a fridge, we were keen to do things right! But to see the full story and sooooo many more pictures, head over to this post!

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So there we have it… before and after! I hope you like it! I can’t stress enough how difficult it was living without a working kitchen for two years and for a long time I never thought we would get to a place where we would be finally done, but we have and it feels amazing. I truly feel blessed every time I put toast in the toaster and pile it high with beans and black pepper, did I mention I’m the world’s worst cook!?