Gates of Bedlam Too

Just a quick update - more later.

Last night I cooked the first real meal in our new kitchen (warming things up in the microwave doesn't count - nor do toasted sangers).

There's still lots to do - we decided we want to replace the window before we get the tiler to do the splashback and we still have lots of painting and stuff to do, but it's functional!!!

I have pics, but need to get them organised into before and after shots.

For some time I've been really frustrated by the bad design of my kitchen. Now that I'm doing more cooking, it's become a renovation priority (as opposed to maintenance priority). So we decided at a few weeks ago that we'd work towards getting it done this year.

It's something that requires a lot of decisions and research and so we thought we'd start looking at things fairly early on. This weekend, we thought we'd go out and look at flooring options and major appliances.

Now, the only major kitchen appliances that I want to buy new are the oven, cook-top and range hood. We spent a pleasant few hours wandering around various places. By the time we got to Harvey Norman we had a pretty good idea of prices. I knew what I'd really like (pyrolytic oven, ceramic cook-top with touch-control etc) and I knew that this was outside our budget.

We were only doing a price comparison at HN when we discovered that they had pretty much exactly what we wanted for not much more than we would pay for something much lower down the scale. The reasons why were complicated, but understandable. I won't go into details - suffice it to say that I thought the reductions were valid. A case of being in the right place at the right time - assuming that my credit card could take the damage (just).

As I'm not prepared to waste a significant portion of the warranty period with them sitting in a box, we've come up with a satisfactory interim option - so maybe in a few weeks, I'll have at least part of my new kitchen. Preparation space will still be at a premium, but at least the actual cooking and cleanup should be more satisfactory.

This is the second time that the 'right place and time' thing has happened to me regarding a major purchase. The last one was the car. That's worked out really well, so I'm hoping this one does as well.