Electrical work is a pain

So I know nothing about electrical stuff – I leave it up to those who know what  the go is. What is frustrating though, is that when the kitchen/bathroom extension was done 30-odd years ago, not a lot of thought/planning was done and as such, it’s a big fat mess.

There’s no cavities in the walls, there’s no thought of future planning and cables have been run in all sorts of weird ways and done to no standards at all. So what should have been a reasonably straight forward job of removing a couple of power points and adding in a couple of new ones turned into an all-day job as almost every electrical appliance from the back of the house was run off just 1 circuit. Yep – microwave; dishwasher; fridge; washing machine and dryer. A miracle I’m told that I could ever use 2 appliances at the same time – thankfully the appliances I have obviously are pretty efficient or don’t draw too much current. That previous statement is probably all sorts of incorrect.

Anyway, here’s my walls now after lots of chasing was done and much work is needed to patch them nicely.

old-sink electrical-stove electrical-pantry

Time for a new kitchen!

The kitchen, often thought of as the heart of a home, has been an often overlooked part of my house and something I never quite knew what to do with. Everything worked, so why replace it? Sure – a dishwasher was added when we first moved in, and replaced earlier this year, but apart from a bit of new benchtop laminate for the princely sum of $300 12 years ago, it’s been untouched.

So with the oven not staying on; the sink not draining; the cupboards starting to fall apart as well as the real need for some proper storage – it’s time for an upgrade!

Here’s what it looked like to give you a visual – pantry + kitchen:

pantrykitchen-pantry-view

We tried all sorts of layouts – even got in a kitchen designer to come up with new ideas. We had grand plans of a butler’s pantry with the sink/dishwaher in the pantry; appliances against the bathroom wall so no middle bench/island. We heavily considered a mix of white drawers with loads of wood veneer for the cupboards; marble/stone benchtops everywhere with subway tiles and so-on.

But after playing around with that configuration heaps, it just wasn’t going to work so back to the original style, just done really nicely.