Kitchen renovations in Hot town, summery in the city - 2017

With two ikea trips (panic attacks from T cut the first short so I went back once R got in from work) and advice from a friend (it often takes the eyes of someone who hasn’t been using the room for fourteen years…) I’ve been rearranging my KITCHEN which is the BANE of my life! It is small with three doorways making it very impractical. However, I needed to make a change. As always, there are no before pictures because I’m always too excited to get going!!

This area had the fruit bowl but was, pretty much, otherwise useless with no electricity socket. I got A new bread bin with a flat top so that I could store the fruit and bread without using extra space.

The larder. It had the orange recycling box at the front, under the food shelves which made it a pain to get into the cupboard. Also there were lots of electric utensils which were rarely used as I couldn’t easily reach them.

A closer look at the back shelves. The shopping bags, in the top shelf, took up most of the space in the floor. I’ve moved the electric utensils to other shelves, making space for the bags, leaving space on the floor.

To the left, i bought an ikea show storage unit to put recycling into. They’re separated into paper /cardboard, glass /tins and plastic. Lila made the signs. This stops the need for access to the orange box and means the plastic bag of plastic is no longer in the way of cooking.

All my stone ware was on top of the cooker which wasn’t really safe as the top is supposed to be a vent for the grill (broiler). I put the shelf in between the cooker and clock to store the stone ware. It took a lot of effort as I couldn’t get the drill through the bricks - I had to use progressively bigger drill bits!

To the left of the cooker we had lots of little hooks that had the utensils and the plastic recycling hanging from it. I added a new bar with hooks which give a much cleaner look and more secure utensil storage.

This corner had the toaster which took up a lot of spare space. Adding the little shelves had saved a lot of space.

While this is where the kettle lived, along with the radio and all those coffee jars. It was very cluttered.

These shelves had lots of ikea baskets but meant that I couldn’t really see what we had. I’ve got rid of a lot of the baskets along with ‘stuff’ that I hadn’t used in years. It’s a lot easier to see what is there and I’ve put some of the electrics that I would like to use more on it.

And this is the window /door combo. I reckon that must be a full length lintel across there. At the other side is a rather draughty conservatory. I’d like to have a proper roof put on it and the walls rebuilt, knock down the wall and create a larger kitchen. It would cost A LOT more money than I can afford though 🙄.

So, that was my three day project and it cost less than £100.