Kitchin’ Itchin’

I made the fatal error last week of looking at Sydney properties on the ‘off chance’ that we ‘might’ like to move in the next ‘little’ while. We are in a great (smallish) terrace in a great location and home invaders, no parking and parties aside I LOVE living here 90% of the time. Actually, probably 95% of the time. I tell you it is a depressing exercise having a look at what you can get for your money. While our suburb is going gang busters on the up and up with ridiculous sale prices, that means that if we want to stay in (or near) this area we have to come up with the extra couple of hundred (!) thousand required to buy something. The whole exercise of looking at properties online for hours literally left me feeling woozy. It was like the popcorn overload that I do every time at the movies. I just couldn’t stop and in the end I felt woozy, dizzy and more than slightly confused. Should we move to an apartment and live all cosmopolitan style closer to the city? Should we move further out to the suburbs? Or move way out and get a fabulous massive house? Or call me crazy should we just move out of Sydney all together? In the end I just had to walk away Renee and turn off the laptop, and take a deep breath. And in said deep breath taking, I had a look around and thought, you know what? This will do. For now. It’s all we need. It’s ours. And perhaps if we give it a little tweak then maybe I will have a renewed love for it all over again.

Which got me onto another rabbit hole warren. Where to start first? The bathroom? Should we try and extend upstairs? The kitchen? Oh yes. The kitchen. The kitchen is great. It is functional, it works, it’s just a little tired. I gather it would have been new about 15 years ago so while it is still fine, it could do with a little upgrade. And from what twitter tells me, and other such smart bloggers that I asked, they tell me that I could do a makeover, rather than an entire new model and it would be cheap(ish) to do so. And I, no doubt, would still be loving myself silly in my ‘new’ kitchen. And no, I am not sure just why there are so many of ‘these’ ‘little’ ‘ quotation marks’ in this entry?
So. I started to google. I made sure I had the time to do it. I looked on blogs. And kitchen websites. And blogs. And went with my gut instinct on what I liked. Then I stepped back and looked at what I had. A mood board, if you will. Ha! I have totally stolen that term from far crisper design blogs than my own. And what I found was fairly consistent. There were certainly styles that ran through them all as you will see.







Whilst all of the above may not be to your liking what do you think? The end conclusion for me is that I think with a lick o’ paint and some new wooden bench tops, and some new knobs (I giggle every time I write that – yes I am a 14 year old girl at heart) we could have a great new space for little $. What do you think? Have any suggestions or practical advice? I have NO idea and can inform you that both Rob and I are not practical people. Fabulous yes, but renovators we are not.

Comments

  1. Those pictures are gorgeous!

    I think a kitchen makeover sounds like a great idea. Even just changing what’s on your benchtops and your walls can make a difference to the look of your kitchen. I say go for it!

  2. I love white kitchens with a splash of personality thrown in!
    Will be fab!

    As for Sydney prices, Im with you.. We lived in Crows Nest for a while but had to move away when Byron came along because we needed a bigger place and could hardly afford the place we had… Sad day indeed 🙁

  3. take it all back to white and start again…that’s what these pictures tell me. Apart from opening up the space with white it’s clean, it’s fresh, it can be modern, vintage,classic….it’s so very now and even a bit swedish!
    Please do it so I can come along for the ride!!!

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  5. I know a good painter he did your brothers house he works for just a couple of cases of vino ..you might know him his name is Gavin just a suggestion.

  6. Great images and great inspiration! We’re also about to embark on a reno of our kitchen/living/dining area so I’ve been obsessively collecting tear sheets and references…planning and dreaming is half the fun of it!

  7. When we sold our sydney unit we changed the handles to matt stainless steel numbers and it made a huge difference. Painting the cabinets, fabbo lighting and new benchtops will make everything seem new and utterly gorgeous!

    We also only changed the handles on our kitchen when we moved in here – from the standard wooden knobs to white ceramic french-style ones. Amazing.

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