It’s time for the great Kitchen Reveal 🙂 To be honest I’ve been waiting for it all to be ‘perfect and complete’ but as it’s still not I believe you’ve all patiently waited long enough. When I recall what my kitchen was and gaze upon what it is now, well it’s just too incredible for words. Some days I just stand looking and smiling, then become inspired and become creative trying new recipes, it has that effect on me much to my family’s pleasure.
Let’s take a tour around the room. All cupboards under the benchtop are drawers (except for below the sink). There are three drawers on two sides which house cutlery, crockery, glass jars etc. On the third side are two deeper drawers for appliances, pots and pans and bakeware.
For the doors and panels we choose Laminex Lamiwood in White Gloss, we debated a two pack coating but decided with small children fingermarks would be forever visible. Our drawers and doors all have soft close hinges and we love them! Recently we went away on holidays and after hearing the children bang kitchen cupboard doors closed all week I’m soo grateful we have soft closing hinges. Our drawers are Harn Triomax’s soft close drawer system and door hinges from Harn too, really impressed with these. Door/drawer handles are Momo Caserta Contemporary Bow handles in brushed nickel and the laminated kickboards have been coated in Brushed Aluminium.
Whilst a stone benchtop would have been wonderful our budget dictated a Laminex Benchtop. We choose Diamond Gloss Kashmir Granite with an Acrylic Edge and I love it!
The two anomalies on this bench are Pop Up Power Points, you can see in the foreground how the pop up looks when pulled up, each has three power points and at the base are two usb portals. When not in use you simply push down with just the brushed nickel top visible.
We decided upon two ovens rather than purchasing another 900mm oven as we’ve discovered heating up a huge oven is often not necessary nor economical. After lots of research we decided on two Westinghouse WVE613S and are very happy with them. We use the left oven for baking and the right oven for dinners. The narrow cupboards to either side of the ovens house cutting boards and baking trays. The corner pantry is huge, floor to ceiling shelving and double the size of our previous pantry. For now we aren’t purchasing a new fridge and freezer but when these ‘reach the end of their life’ they’ll be replaced with stainless steel appliances.
Just ignore the paint, I have been experimenting with colours whilst trying to decide upon the colour for our glass splashback, obviously this colour is a ‘no go’ and since receiving the quote for glass, horror! we’ll be installing tiles after all, not my first choice but I’m at peace with that decision.
To share a few ‘extras’ that make my heart sing; our benchtop in the foreground is 1000mm wide!:-) We call this our servery bench and often use this as a ‘bistro bar’ at meal times, it’s a huge space to prepare meals at and has plenty of overhang for bar stools to gather under.
Under the stainless steel lid in the foreground is our compost bin, I love it!! I so wanted unsightly food scraps out of sight and insisted there had to be a solution, which there was! Once full the bin is simply lifted out, emptied, cleaned and returned.
Our sink tapware is a spray mixer, it pulls out and can be changed to a spray stream. Whilst we could have purchased some incredible spray mixers for $1000!! we settled on one much cheaper, a Mondella Cadenza Curvy Chic and are reasonably happy. To be honest I would have liked a stronger spray but the lack of is more thanks to tank water pressure not the hardware.
Our sink is an Oliveri Nu-Petite Single Bowl and I love the extra depth of the sink, at a 30L capacity it is a great size for our extra large pots. Tip: Check appliance prices online and your local stores will generally match prices. Whilst I love the depth of our sink I confess to being a bit disappointed as to the draining size, it’s on the rather tight size, we only just manage to fit our drying rack on it, though perhaps I’m used to the older style sinks. Our regular and recycled bins sit under the sink.
Looking behind the sink you can see we’ve taken the benchtop flush up to the window runners, a rather tricky design and installation feat but one we’re extremely happy with.
The window and screen opens to become a servery window, think parties on the deck below, a bench running along, food going out, dirty dishes coming in. Having a servery window was rather important to us and we looked at a few options; a gas strut window, beautiful but expensive and what about screens, flies and mosquitoes are an issue in this region. A bi-fold window is also expensive and the screen equally so. After discussing the matter with our glazier we realised all windows in our home already open in the center, our only issue was the screen, we were assured for only an extra $80 a track and screens could be made to meet in the middle and slide open. Huge win, we have our servery window for those future parties.
As well as the drawers and pantry, we also have overhead cupboards and a broom cupboard on the end, so much space 🙂 What isn’t visible are our corner cupboards. We were determined to not have any wasted space so our solution was that the corner cupboards don’t open into the kitchen. The cupboard in the foreground to the extreme left opens into the dining room and houses lesser used items, the corner cupboard just under the red mix master opens to the outside and houses BBQ and picnic items, we’re rather happy with this solution.
So all our hard work on the kitchen is finally complete and leaves us with an incredibly inviting space, welcoming us in to create and spend time together.
#Sharing over at the Builder’s Wife with this week’s Home Improvement Thursday