This is a long post (sorry), so sit back with a cuppa and enjoy!
It always takes time to get things done...
I am one of those people (like probably most of you out there!) once you decide on
something, you wanna get cracking straight away!
We lived in our house about 5 years before we even tackled the kitchen...
This is a shot of what it looked like when we bought the house just over 8 years ago. Sorry for the grainy look, I only had this photo from when the house was for sale. Gotta remember to take those before photo's!
The people we bought the house from were really clean and tidy
BUT, we didn't like their style.
The stove was the first thing to stop working, so we bought a new stainless steel number from Clive Peeters. The staff are so helpful there and although the stove wasn't in stock, it was delivered within a week of purchasing it.
Here she is, our De Longhi beauty. She sits next to our Bosch dishwasher. We thought we would get a stainless dishwasher but we liked the white, it allows our stove to stand out!
Once the stove was in, everything else looked old and tired. We then installed a stainless rangehood, which fits in perfectly above the stove.
Sorry about the dark photo's from my iphone, I will have to take photos one day with my camera. Or better still Mr Echoes who loves photography, could take them for me? (I am sure he will be reading this at some stage! Hi honey :) )
We then replaced the old cupboard doors, the panel under the bench, the kickboards, and the pantry door all in vinyl wrap. We also replaced the bench with laminex, we would have loved stone but it was out of our budget and new hardware.
The kitchen looked better instantly!
It was a good way to save $$$$ too as the carcass to the cupboards and the design of the kitchen was perfect for the small space.
We also had drawers installed in these areas for storing glasses, cups and utensils. Soft close drawers too, which are just wonderful!
The splash back was a really old fashioned 80's tile with fruit on every third of fourth tile. I have searched for before photos but can't find any. Trust me, they were gross!
Our budget didn't allow for removal of the tiles, so we painted them! Using this fantastic product White Knight tile paint. We chose a green and have had amazing comments from people including the trademen who installed the kitchen!
You can make the tile out here in this photo.
It is a 3 step process, first clean the tiles - with this then prime with this and then paint with this and finish with this! It makes it a 4 step process with the grout pen!
If you go to your friendly Bunnings they will be able to help you with the process and the White Knight website can help you through it all too!
We ended up doing one extra coat of paint just to make it look even better. It wears really well, it gets a bit greasy behind the hotplates but wipes clean and so far no paint has come off or chipped off! We have regrouted using the pen a couple of times as this does where off with cleaning.
We then realised our fluoro light wasn't working for us, so we had installed 2 stainless lights from Bunnings they were only about $30 each from memory, (you can see them in the above photo). We also had 2 downlights installed, which makes it perfect at night, no more working in your shadow!
Finally we purchased 3 new faux leather stools from one of my favourite homeware stores Freedom. Here they are here. They were a bit more pricey than we wanted to pay, but we had to get them once we saw them, they were just right!
So there you have it,
from this:
to this:
How are your renovations going?
Have you done any lately?
Take care,
