You might have seen that we recently took delivery of an oven. But we seem to be missing something else quite important.
A kitchen.
Now, a big part of that is because we don’t have any of the key parts of a house at the moment. A working toilet? Nope. Bedrooms? No. Real electrics? Also no. But that’s not the only reason.
Because at the end of the day, you can’t do everything, we’re doing a lot, but we know where the budget can stretch to and where we would be making too many compromises. So we’ve made a decision to NOT install a kitchen in the next few months. Let me explain.
We’ve actually designed the kitchen and I love it. It’s going to be brilliant. There will be changes, for sure, but I’ve got a plan and direction. We even bought the fridge and the oven (see our oven delivery over on Instagram).
But we know that the money that would be spent on building a kitchen will go a lot further spread across many smaller projects. We can get more of the house closer to being done that way, and keep the not-started areas concentrated into fewer spaces.
Charlotte and Sky, from Vivi et Margot (see image below), really tipped us over the edge to making the decision to build ourselves a temporary kitchen that can be both beautiful and functional in the medium term, with materials that we can use again to build the workshop furniture at a later date. It’s a win-win. This will also allow us to live in the house any make sure that the plans we think are right, really are right for the house and for how we live in it.
After all, we might have had the house three years, but we’ve not actually stayed a night there yet.
Image from @vivietmargot
Particularly with renovating before living in the house, there seems to be an expectation that you get the whole thing done. For us, the goal has always been to get it ‘comfortable’. What that means exactly, we’ve never been completely sure. But we’ve been very happy staying with family for the last few years and we know that when we uproot this kids to move in, it needs to be safe and comfortable.
So for now, we can get the utility room half-sorted with a sink and washing machine, and come back to building a temporary kitchen before we move in.
Let us know in the comments below, would you do the same, or would you have made a different decision?
2 thoughts on “A massive renovation and still no kitchen plans?!”
That’s absolutely perfect. And the cherry on top is that everything is reusable for another space later on! Get the house comfortable and safe and then figure it out. I agree that kitchens should be the last thing tackled after you’ve been in the space. You’re doing great! Keep it up.
Ah, that’s so nice! It can all feel very overwhelming so knowing that we have put that space on the back burner for a while is a weight off for sure.