One of the (many) pitfalls of living in a house that is over 200 years old is dealing with the bizarre renovation choices of dozens of previous owners. We’ve been in the house two years now and we still have a lot of work to do.
By far, the worst thing about the house was the kitchen. I took this photo at the open house before we bought it. Behold:
Notice that the previous owners covered their clean dishes with a dish towel? I suspect the dishes are there because they will stay far cleaner next to the sink than in the cupboards. When we moved it in, it took me EIGHT HOURS to clean the kitchen! And it was still disgusting.
So this kitchen probably dated back to the 60’s. The material: chipboard with fake wood laminate. See that white film on the cupboards? Yeah, they whitewashed the fake wood laminate. Why? I’ll never know. The chipboard was swollen, deteriorating and infested with cockroaches. A bit of cleaning fixed the roach problem, but unfortunately, we had to live with the kitchen like this for six months. During that time two of the drawers next to the sink fell apart, the stove stopped working (the oven door didn’t close), and the fan above the stove blew up.
We couldn’t afford to do a fancy remodel, so an IKEA kitchen would have to suffice. First things first, we ripped out the old kitchen.
We hired an electrician to rewire the circuits and a plumber to install the faucets, but the majority of the work was DIY. Well, DI-Dad and Brother-In-Law. Truth be told, the fiance and I were working during most of the remodel. We did the finishing touches like painting, hanging shelves and attaching the doors and handles.
Here the kitchen is starting to look a bit more finished.
The kitchen looked like this for a few months until we found time to finish the job. It’s still not 100% of the way done but it’s looking infinitely better than before. Please pardon the lack of editing in this photo. It was taken hastily a while ago so it’s not looking its finest. I’ll try to take a better photo later.
This kitchen is such a pleasure to cook in. Not that I cook much because the fiance is the chef in the household. Because the person who doesn’t cook has to do the dishes, I’ll admit that now I don’t mind doing the dishes in this kitchen. The pot rack is super handy and the addition of a dishwasher has made life so much easier! I love having open shelving. Everything is now so accessible. Granted, this isn’t the nicest kitchen in the world, but it’s certainly a significant improvement.
slosydney 