Well today we've moved on to the cherry on top. Except it's not in the bathroom.
As we steamroll our way towards the finish line for this downstairs renovation, we're back to the downstairs kitchen! Last we left it, I'm pretty sure it was looking like this.
Does an appliance-less kitchen qualify as a kitchen?
We didn't think so. So... I set about filling it with appliances. We dithered for quite a while over whether or not we should bite the bullet and buy new appliances, or whether we could get some decent options second hand at a fraction of the price. After all, so far we haven't had any issues with any of the appliances we've bought secondhand.
After realising that we'd be looking at well over $2,000 for brand new ones (and that's for the cheap brands), we went secondhand hunting. I found this gas cooktop and electric oven combination for a grand total of $400...
And we shelled out about $100 for a rangehood to go above. We had a bit of trouble finding an appropriate rangehood, because we needed one that didn't need to be ducted outside in order to work effectively.
And I had already bought a $100 IKEA sink that you got a glimpse of when we put the tin on the back of the kitchen peninsula. See it there perched o top of the bench?
And I paired it with a $100 goose-neck IKEA tap as well that I forgot to take a close-up shot of when it was installed. But you can see it here in this wider shot.
Where you can also see our new integrated dishwasher! It's a Smeg, and we got it for $250! It's nowhere near brand new, but it's a good brand, and it works nicely. So, at a mere fraction of what a brand new dishwasher costs, we figure we can fairly easily replace it with another secondhand one if need be down the track.
The fact that it's integrated (meaning you're only supposed to see the top panel, and you can put a piece that matches your cabinets over the rest of it) caused us a few problems, since obviously we were working with our secondhand kitchen cabinets, and didn't have many spare cabinet doors leftover.
We did find that the front of what was supposed to be a drawer under a wall oven was the perfect width, but unfortunately it wasn't tall enough, so we had to add a plain panel beneath it. I think it does look a bit strange, but hopefully only if you're focusing on it.
But we're still not quite done!
What's next? Window coverings!
As you can see from this wider kitchen shot from above (where you can also decide whether or not you think the panels on the dishwasher look strange), the windows in the lounge bring in a lot of natural light, and are looking pretty bare.
We actually installed them before we installed the newly black-sprayed tin panel on the back of the kitchen bench (see here), so we had a chance to lay out the smaller piece of tin to demonstrate how nicely they match.
And you can just see a black curtain peeking out in the corner of this shot when Tom was installing the tin.
We also bought matching panels for the bedrooms too, but stupidly, I forgot to take photos of them. Sorry!
I didn't forget to take photos of the blind we bought for the kitchen window, though! Yay!
We found it at Bunnings, and it was lovely and cheap! I'm afraid I can't recall the exact price, but it was less than $50, I'm sure.
It has a nice woven straw kind of feel, and it fits the slightly odd-sized kitchen window beautifully!
It actually lines perfectly with the little IKEA sink! Yay for happy accidents, yet again!
What do you think? Can you believe that is almost exactly the same view as this, just a few months ago?
I can't!
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