Kitchen Capers

We had been planning our new kitchen for over a year and decided November would be the month to get it fitted.  We were doing most of the work ourselves and only needed a plumber to fit the double ceramic sink and an experienced worktop fitter to cut the solid oak tops we had bought.  We spent many miserable hours getting lost in Ikea and:

• queuing to collect what items they had in stock
• queuing to arrange delivery for those they didn't
• explaining that if Ikea choose to warehouse their goods in Peterborough that's their choice and therefore we are not paying additional delivery costs (we won)
• paid, in fairness, a reasonable sum of money
• arranged to work from home so we could take delivery
• re-arranged our working from home days when the delivery got changed
• piled the 70 plus boxes into the shed thoughtfully emptied for us by the October robbers
• booked a long weekend to get started
• bickered like children as we both tried to organise the other (I let Himself think he'd won.  Psychology in action)
• remembered that between us we had 3 European business trips in Nov.  

Below shows what we lived with for a few days while Himself went to Germany.

Then we had a weekend of this...

 and this...

Here's what I left when I went to Budapest one week and Germany the week after.

And this is (more or less) what I came home to.  The new (stupidly heavy) sink is in and hasn't fallen through the floor, the worktops are shaped around it and behind, going deep into the window and the new corner cupboards with an integrated microwave are installed.  Ikea messed up on the two drawer fronts you can see missing and promised we'd have them 5th Dec, then 22nd Dec, now 21st Jan.  Ho hum.

On the other side - the worktop is fitted beautifully and fairy lights are strung round the range.

The wooden kitchen table had it's legs sanded and painted in a sheeny cream colour ready for Christmas.  We have more work to do to replace the corner cupboards in the top right of the picture below before we can finish off with the under cupboard trim stuff (don't know what you call it), downlights and then the tiles can go on. So we've nearly finished this massive job which started 18 months ago with Himself tripling the size of the chimney so it could take the 110 cm range cooker I wanted to bring with me when I moved in a year ago.  Phew.  Then it's only fitting new external doors, laying flag stones in the front and back porches, replastering the living room, bedrooms and staircase, fitting a new bathroom, moving a couple of internal doors, fitting velux windows in the roof and replacing some windows to go.