The Sketch
There comes a point in the life of every house where you look at various parts and come to the conclusion that they just need to be changed. Time for a kitchen refit.
In the case of our kitchen, this came just under 20 years after we moved into the house. We’d still got the original builders-fit in place. Much of it was starting to look worn or damaged, and it was generally a mess. On top of that, we had a problem with the boiler. Gas service engineers had been telling us for years that they soon wouldn’t be able to get spares for it. We also knew we had a problem with the floor in one corner as a result of some water leakage out of the back of the dishwasher. We didn’t know quite how bad the problem was, but a spongey floor is rarely a good thing.
I figured if I was going to have to replace the floor, then that would mean the units over the top of it would have to come out, and hence the seed was sown that we should replace the cupboards with new ones rather than putting the old ones back.
The Shopping
We shopped around a little bit, including visiting a couple of the big chain suppliers, but in all cases these would require some extra effort in project managing the whole activity, and typically they also won’t quote for anything other than simply installing new units. Everything else becomes a job for “custom pricing” once the work starts. In this context, “custom pricing” means that you’re more or less held to ransom. Once the job has started and your old kitchen is done, you have to do whatever the contractors say. And pay them as much as they ask. Otherwise they’ll leave until you get someone else to do it. By which time they’ve started a different job. Because we wanted more-or-less of a rip and replace job, we wanted to avoid this.
We visited a small local company called Lima Kitchens to see what they were about – partly because of a recommendation from a running friend of Kas’s. They had some nice stuff in the showroom, and very importantly they offer an end-to-end service. So we thought we’d get them to do a design for us to compare against the chain competitors.
The design they suggested was so completely and utterly not like the big-chain suggestions that they more or less had us at that first step. They did it by actually sending someone round to the house and talking to us. Talking to us about what we wanted, what our gripes were, and how we wanted to use our new room. All very good, and when we went in to review the proposal we had a bit of a jaw-dropping moment. It was definitely good. In fact it was better than good. It was fan-dabi-dozi.
The Decision
So once we’d finished admiring the design and giving some basic hints on the types of finish we’d want, we needed some lunch. We went to a nice pubstaurant in Stony Stratford to get fed and to think about what we’d just seen. We didn’t think about it for very long, though. On the way home from Stony we went back to Lima and paid them a deposit. We’d kind of decided just to get on with it.
There was a wait of several weeks after this while we finalised the design while Lima ordered all the stuff. That suited us because we didn’t want to disturb Ami’s period of mock exams during May. So we asked them to start after that. Anyway, it meant that the guts of the job could be done while we were away.
The Work
Everything went more or less to plan, with the notable exception of the wet floor being somewhat wetter than anticipated. This required a small “upgrade” to the work schedule to bring in a builder to replace a fairly significant portion of the chipboard and underlying joists in the soggy corner. Apart from that, though, all was pretty good.
They left us with water, power and heating every night, which was a challenge for them on a couple of days. On the day when they changed the boiler, for instance. That was a late night for the plumbers. When we got back from our holiday we had a functioning kitchen albeit with a dusty floor still and with a few doors missing from the units. Subsequent work rushed along nicely and after 3 complete weeks we were basically done apart from the decorating and a few superficial bits on the cupboards.
Now that we’re completely done, we have started using the kitchen as intended. The layout allows us to sit and hold conversations whilst cooking is in progress, and there’s more than enough space to sit and eat at the centre island. Deep joy.
Footnote (in 2021)
When we originally did the kitchen we didn’t think about the interaction between the door (which opens inwards) and the new island. After a while it became annoying. So we had it changed for a pair of French doors that open outwards. It is much better that way.
