As uncouth as it is to love inanimate objects, I love my oven. And a half.
Gazing at it proudly with my husband, we dream of the culinary delights it will surely produce. What starters we shall master! Our friends shall be in awe of our delicious creations! Pies, puddings, and pre-packaged meals await…
Only first we have to actually install the kitchen.
I was going to leave it there, but can’t resist showing the progress – Barry managed to take down the other bathroom wall last night.
As a non-DIY expert, I think taking down walls sounds like a really scary thing to do. While I have full confidence in my husband’s ability to knock on walls and nod, much like Alan Carr in the Location, Location, Location mashup, it’s terrifying to think that one little mistake could mean a spare room coming down into the kitchen. We could pretend we lived in a studio, I suppose.
Knocking on the living room ceiling and drilling holes into it to fit the spotlights revealed that the joists run a certain way – on the floor plan shown here (which is actually a mirror image of ours, but the only one I could find), they run left to right, and I’ve indicated the walls we’re planning on taking down.
The builder didn’t comment when he came round to quote, so I think that means he was in agreement that they’re not supporting walls.
There is a lot to consider. These three walls contain quite a few items to move, including plug sockets, light switches, the house’s thermostat and two radiators. A third radiator needs to be moved from beside the loo. Everything then needs plastering. It’s not a small undertaking.
I’ve been advised by Barry (I’ve been told I can now provide my husband’s name, which makes life easier!) that electricity wires are, in theory, put in in straight lines. That should make moving the switches easier. Radiators are completely beyond me, but I’ve been told that the pipes come from above, not below, if that means anything to anyone. I’ll try and get some before shots shortly, but the loo’s currently a holding area for all of the stuff from the living room! It’s like living in one of those puzzles at the minute where you can only move one bit at a time.
The first thing to tackle in this whole thing is blocking off the sink and toilet. By removing them, it will give Barry more room to manoeuvre to get the walls surrounding them down. I’m just thinking about the fluffy towels we’ll have when we can fit a tumble dryer in the kitchen rather than hanging them on chairs or radiators to dry. Crispy!
Following my mother-in-law’s suggestion, we decided to look into knocking down walls to make our kitchen a larger room. We think (and so do many of our friends, now we’ve discussed it!) that it’s really small for a house this size. However, we know we’ll be knocking money off our property by getting rid of a room, albeit a smelly hole.
We did have a builder round to quote for knocking walls down, installing a new kitchen (plus installing fitted wardrobes in our room, but that’s definitely going to have to wait), but the prices were more than we’re willing to pay, so the husband is going to do it all himself, with a little help from the tea fairy (me).
We went to B&Q before making a decision, and vaguely had an idea of high gloss white units in mind. We were still at the stage where we were testing the water and weren’t really committing to anything, but as soon as we saw this, we knew we had to have it! The kitchen is from B&Q’s Cooke and Lewis range (as is the photo).
We made an appointment and then a few weeks later sat for an hour having the kitchen designed, with the added benefit of it being on sale as it was January. If you get installation, they do make you change all of your electricity points (“to ensure they’re safe”, never mind we’re in a new build) and the cost for installation alone was a whopping £3,600, but we looked past that to supply only, which was much more manageable (and they were offering 3 years 0% finance).
Then madness gave way to reason and we realised we’d better get another quote from somewhere to make sure it really was reasonable and we hadn’t lost our senses. We went to Wickes to get a quote from lovely Malcolm, who quoted us on the Caledonia. It’s an inoffensive plain white high gloss unit, with integrated handles which I’m not too keen on anyway, but would have lived with if it was the difference of, say, £2k. It wasn’t. And my cleaner mother reliably informs me that integrated handles are a nightmare to clean anyway. Sorry, Malcolm.
I’d also like to point out here that I double checked MSE about B&Q’s units and prices before we sold our souls and there were good reports, but also some scathing ones about the price of their installation. My guess is that it’s something they don’t really care to get involved in, so they make it worth their while for the times they do. As a side note, Martin Lewis’ website is brilliant, and I always check it before buying anything major.
So, the husband trotted back to the B&Q designer with our full page of tweaks for another hour of kitchen creation (measurements were slightly off, we wanted white, not cream, a bigger sink and oven, to name but a few changes).
Ah, the oven. It deserves a post all of its own. In fact, it’s not just an oven. It’s an oven and a half. My mum actually counted the number of knobs on the front from the picture and told me what each of the ten might be for. Seriously.
B&Q price-matched Wickes and even managed to squeeze in a cheeky wine rack, and I’m really glad they did (price-match, that is) because the colour combo units make me much happier than plain white. Granted, we were going to tart the white ones up with a flash of colour from a fuschia upstand, but it’s not the same you understand.
The husband called me to ask if we were going for it; B&Q gave him 20 minutes to make his mind up. I didn’t really need the 20 but ummed and ahed along until we came to an agreeable conclusion.
This was a week last Wednesday. On the Thursday, he got a call from Indesit asking if they could deliver our new oven on Saturday, very eager. He managed to put them off a week, but couldn’t delay it any longer, so we’re going to have a random oven until the walls are sorted, the old kitchen is out, the new kitchen is in and we can get a registered gas man to fit it. The joys of self installation!
Or something like that.
My husband seems to have harboured a heretofore unrealised passion for lights. Our living room previously had two ceiling lights – one over the living area, and one over the dining area. We now have 13. I’m not kidding.
As mentioned previously, I fell in love with the Argos lights which we’ve built our room around, and this involved changing a single chandelier-style light to two of those instead, leaving a giant hole gouged in our ceiling.
We replaced our huge red light over the living area with a Belize light from Argos, which is a lot more discreet, and will make guests feel a little less like they’re being questioned when it’s on.
Then the husband decided that he’d quite like spotlights across the back wall. We went for these inoffensive ones from Wickes, and initially he only wanted to have five or six, but I convinced him he really meant all ten. As it turned out, joists run across where he was drilling, and he ended up having to drill holes in between every light he put in just so he could carve a notch to hide the wiring.
We spent a weekend plastering these holes, and all of the other various dents in the walls that we hadn’t noticed until now, and I got a brief lesson in grit size of sandpaper. That may or not have been when I took the Reader’s Digest DIY Manual to bed.
Anyway, we’ve now got the bulk of the painting done, just the edges to tidy up, and we’re pleased as punch with our choices so far.
While all this was going on, we decided to have a mosey on down to B&Q and see what the kitchen situation was. Over Christmas, we were telling my mother-in-law how we can’t use the downstairs loo as it emits a terrible smell. Actually, it does that whether we’ve used it or next-door-but-one uses it, I think the pipes haven’t got enough of an angle to clear the waste. Our house is over three floors, and we currently have a toilet on each floor, but our guests are asked to use the one on the middle floor anyway, due to the building problem (yes, we complained, as have our neighbours; they cleared them once but it’s recurring and we’re wasting our breath). She made a passing suggestion for us to knock down the walls around the loo, as well as one of the kitchen walls, to make a giant kitchen!
I’ll post separately about the kitchen situation, but the long and short of it is that we’ve bought one, but decided to fit flooring in the living room after we’ve fitted the kitchen so that it doesn’t get wrecked. RIP to the cream living room carpet, by the way, which now looks like it’s been attacked by paint.
I’ve fallen in love with this first white flooring by Quickstep, called Elina Wenge Passionata. I’ve seen varying prices between £11 odd and £30 per square metre, and at 24m2, plus all the extras, it’s quite expensive (to us). Cheapest we saw it at was NCS Flooring.
Ever practical, my husband ordered samples of a similar (but not the same!) flooring, which is Quickstep Girona white chestnut. It’s got more of a grey tinge, which doesn’t offend me as the walls are grey, but I think the white would have lifted the room more. We’ll have to see, but I think we’ll have to go with this as it’s almost half the price!
Around the lights we’d chosen, as I mentioned previously, we thought we’d go for a classic feel in the living room. We chose this beautiful green quite quickly (Wickes’ Boudoir), and after slathering the wall with three shades of grey from tester pots, chose the palest (Nickel). The green is a chalky flat matt, which works really well – it makes it look quite grown up!
We discussed, Googled, and then discussed some more which wall we should make the feature wall and how to ensure the room wasn’t too dark with having vast expanses of grey walls. We’ve counteracted this by choosing a pale grey, sorting lots of lighting, and we’ve decided to go for a white wood laminate floor rather than the dark wood we’d originally wanted.
The ceiling was painted last Saturday by the husband. Painting a white ceiling white is the most unsatisfying feeling ever (or so he tells me); you can barely see where you’ve painted. I spent my time feeding him and wandering round looking at the ceiling, pointing out bits he’d missed. And then got shouted at for “making it up”. I wasn’t.
I have a confession. My name’s Michelle, and my husband and I have been living in a new Barratt’s home for over three and a half years now. Until last week, it was still magnolia. The whole thing.
In my defence, we selected some pretty awesome statement pieces to counteract the magnolia when we first moved in. As we were advised not to paint immediately, due to nail pops and the house settling in general, we thought we’d get creative in other ways. Like this cool red Kulla light from Ikea in the living room, and this lovely yellow four poster Hemnes bed, also from Ikea. You’ll notice a theme.
Anyway, we’ve recently decided to dust off the old overalls, get our fingers out (neither of which I mean literally), and make some changes.
We went a bit mad with paint tester pots to start with. Luckily, we live two minutes from a Wickes store and they were on offer at buy one get one free, otherwise we may have been forced to rein it in a bit.
We couldn’t even decide where we were going to paint to begin with, so we bought six tiny pots for our bedroom and four for the living room. All of which were splodged across the walls. I have a strong feeling we’ll have to live with it in our room for quite some time.
Anyway, we decided to go with the living room first. Bear in mind that when we last decorated everything was when we moved here in June 2009. As you can see above, for our living room as was, we’d gone with the standard magnolia walls, cream carpet (I’ll assume you’ll take this as a given for any other room I discuss), with red, black and grey highlights. I like to think that people don’t notice we haven’t painted anything until now, as we chose our rooms’ contents very carefully.
When we first moved, our first choice was our lovely corner sofa from DFS, which unbelievably, we got on sale. Pretty much everything else in the room was from Ikea, including a six seater dining table and bookcases for our TV and DVDs.
We’ve moved away from the black/red combo now, and have decided on a much more classic feel for the living room, although we’re keeping the current sofa and dining set.
The first items I chose, which seem to have set the mood for the room, were some lovely lights from Argos. This review by Bobby from Yorkshire (scroll to the bottom) sealed the deal to be honest. As no one Argos in the area seemed to have two, my other half had to trail around Leeds one day picking the pair up from opposite ends of the city, but they’re worth it!