Our kitchen has always been a very important hub in our family. The place we cook, the place we would run to sneak a tablespoon of milo after school, a place where we have dance parties and somehow it also ends up being the communal chatting space. Our kitchen was redesigned in the 90s as a green and timber look gumnut baby themed kitchen. The layout made the space extremely small. You could only fit one person in comfortably at a time.
This meant that when it came to renovating this time, we really wanted to take the time to think about the best way to set this room up. Our kitchen has a very strange layout with doorways on every single wall. We ended up ditching the doorway into the toilet and creating a new entryway in another room for it. We inset the doorway creating a cove for our fridge to go in.
Our fridge was originally in the stove nook so this was a great way to get that space back for the stove.
The sink stayed in the same place, however we finally got rid of the terrible corner that was in the old kitchen that made it feel so closed in.
We also had a corner island that boxed the kitchen completely in leaving very little space. We redesigned this so that our cupboard butted up against the wall and on the other side was our beautiful natural edge timber slab counter top with drawers underneath.
The colour we chose for our cabinetry left the cabinet makers and every other tradie that came through completely speechless. We’ve never had so many people ask to take photos as this was not your stock standard colour choice. The cabinet maker ended up calling it “crazy lady blue” which has stuck with us and we still call it that to this day.
Apart from our house being a beach house, the reason we chose the colour is that we were looking through swatches a few years prior and came across a Dulux colour called Mystification and fell in love with it. If you continue keeping up with these posts you’ll see the pops of mystification all throughout our house (and outside too).
After we added the cabinetry, I had the task of prepping and painting every wall. Unfortunately the shelf above the stove nook and the skirting below the ceiling were a dark forest green oil paint… the struggle was real! I probably spent the majority of my time on these as every time I sanded bits would peel off and stay stuck. A very messy and tedious job but we got there in the end.
I’m sure you can tell by now that this was our toughest renovation by far. It was so worth it though! Our new kitchen is stunning. Everyone comments on the colours but especially the timber benchtop is a knockout. We can also all be in there at the same time and not get in each others way. A successful renovation all round.
Mum’s/Bob’s Notes – As Georg said it took a lot of thought to come up with a layout that would work/we were happy with. We did make a few adjustments throughout, but overall it was as planned, and I have to say it works! A couple of years on and still so happy to spend time making yummy feasts.
The only “miss” was an incorrect measurement somewhere (not mine!) meant that the stove has a gap either side which is SO annoying, plus unsightly. But we’ve come up with a plan, and now that we have a new mitre bench saw, a fix will be in place soon, so watch this space!
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