Well, after 9 and a half weeks of construction, our dream kitchen is complete – and I don’t mean that to sound completely corny, but it’s true! I can’t believe it’s finished. It’s like someone else’s kitchen in our house haha! It has taken us a little while to get things in, and there are still a few bits to do, but I’m so excited to finally be sharing it with you. 

If you saw my ‘before’ post, then you’ll know that we had a lack of space in terms of storage and worktops. Not anymore! We’ve probably got more workspace next to our new cooker than we had in the whole of the previous kitchen – it’s mad but brilliant! The kitchen we chose is from Howdens (who were brilliant) and it’s Glendevon in flint grey. We loved the curved corners and I’m so pleased that we decided to splurge on getting these, as it works particularly well on the bit that goes around the corner from the ‘old’ kitchen to the new bit.

I’m really pleased that we chose to match the floor with the worktops – it works so well. This is American pecan wood-effect laminate flooring and worktop. I love the look of real wood but we couldn’t afford real wood flooring! But it doesn’t matter at all – this looks just as good. We’ve got an area where we’ll put a table, and it will be really good to be able to eat in the kitchen. When it arrives we’ll be living in here I think! This is where it will go (you can just about see it – the light wasn’t great today as it’s pretty gloomy outside!):

I’m standing at the front window looking at where the garage used to be for this next photo. You can get a sense of how the old garage and old kitchen have been combined – it’s such a big space!

It’s lovely and light with the window and door. We haven’t got blinds for the back windows yet, mainly because we couldn’t find what we were looking for. We’ll have to get them put up soonish though, because it’s a real sun trap at the back! In the old bit of the kitchen, the sink has stayed in the same place, but the washing machine has been moved in there and we also have a dishwasher (yay!). Not that we’ve worked out how to use it yet, because we keep forgetting to buy some dishwasher salt…anyway, this is working out well in this area. We’ve got our cutlery canteen over here because it didn’t open fully where the upper units are. We got one of those pull-out larders, which we would highly recommend if you’re redesigning your own kitchen! The boiler has been boxed in here too, so it looks much neater.

Please excuse all my washing up here! 🙂

The units are really good quality, and it’s so lovely to have more storage space. We had forgotten about so many things that we had for our kitchen, and it was great to unpack them all. We also discovered that we have quite a mug collection!

Although I love so many things about our new kitchen, our cooker has to be my favourite part. I have dreamed of having a range cooker for so long, and it’s amazing. We chose a Cookmaster by Leisure and it’s really easy to use, and with 7 burners we should have enough cooking space now! It took us a while to decide what to do about tiles, as we had seen these lovely mosaic tiles that we wanted to have. After much thought and discussion, we decided to have an upstand around all the worktops, with the tiles as a splash back only. This was a good decision – having these tiles all around the kitchen would have looked a bit weird, especially in places where the space isn’t very deep (like around the sink). I think the tiler was pleased too – it would have been a nightmare job for him!

We are so lucky to have been able to complete this project, and are so pleased with how it has turned out. It still feels really surreal to be honest! I can’t wait to get trying out new recipes and to get the final touches done. Here’s to fun times in our new kitchen!