Because we felt like we were making a bit of progress with the kitchen planning, we decided to go and see some in real life. Armed with our plan, our first stop was Wren. No real reason, they just had a good sale on, had a country style that we thought was alright, good colour options, and it’s not too far.

Well. We made the mistake of going just as it opened, and I have never been inundated with so many helpful people in such a short space of time. It was overwhelming. I swear to God, they were popping out of cupboards as we walked round the showroom. We then made the further mistake of loitering at the kitchen we’d actually come to see and Barry cracked when we were approached for maybe the tenth time. That’s a modest estimate.

We hadn’t had time to discuss what we thought of the kitchen between ourselves yet, but that was no object, as the very helpful kitchen designer didn’t have time to speak to us there and then, but she did have the half hour it took to make an appointment for a survey, an appointment for a design consultation, give us a top line price and somewhere in there I arranged for my mum to babysit for the two hours (TWO HOURS) that the consultation would take. Shell shocked, we were then strangely left alone to wander the rest of the kitchens, like we’d been marked. Maybe they can tell from the look in your eyes if you’ve already been claimed.

We then made it to B&Q where they had the opposite issue. Their staff were busy and we had to hunt someone down to ask them a question, but I strongly preferred that. Their showroom was tiny though, and we didn’t find anything inspiring there.

As an aside, I’m not sure where I’ve been, but everyone appears to have cashmere as a colour option for their kitchens now. Do you want a kitchen the colour of this goat? I suppose it sounds nicer than putty, which is what colour I’d say this was.

We weren’t convinced by the quality of the Wren kitchen – it looked nice, but didn’t feel great. We only discovered that we’d both noticed this in the debrief at Frankie & Benny’s later.

Next on our hit list is DIY Kitchens, which I’m really hoping will be The One. We’ve had colour samples from them, but they’ve not been totally convincing, so we need to go in person. Onwards!