In the last few weeks I have learnt, that there is no such a thing as stress free kitchen renovation, no matter who you hire to do the job!
The thing with kitchens is that you never know what you will find, and with the history of our house, we should have known it’s like opening a can of worms! Kitchens fitters have been working very hard all week and even though we are far from being finished, it is finally starting to look like a kitchen should!
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| Our temporary worktop |
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| Funny looking temporary taps |
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| There is always room for a wine fridge! |
We are waiting for the painter decorator (different person) to paint the walls next week and for our laminate floor to be installed by our usual floor guy (sometime in the next two weeks..he seems to be fully booked at the moment). Our kitchen fitters were supposed to install the laminate floor initially but because the floor is different level from the dining room floor, there is a step involved, and they were unsure how to deal with this.
In addition, one of the cabinet doors was damaged in transit and we are waiting for this to be replaced. Also, there was no sign of our ‘hidden drawer’ (which I desperately need for knives and forks!) so we are still waiting for Magnet to send this . The most annoying part is that we will not have worktops for 3 weeks!! We chose to have quartz worktops and they come from a different supplier, recommended to us by Magnet. The reason why it is taking 3 weeks is because our Magnet contact messed up and forgot to arrange them to come over to take the measurements. After a few angry phone calls to Magnet last week, they have now given us a temporary worktop until the quartz one goes down. It’s not ideal but at least I can use the kitchen for cooking purposes.
Choosing the right worktop was such a fun but nerve wrecking experience. I love natural stones but after my high maintenance bathroom marble floor, I wanted to steer clear from them. Initially I thought I wanted granite (laminate and wood were out of the question as I love the look of stone worktops) but then we remembered quartz being the perfect alternative.
It was actually easy to pick the colour we did. Both my husband and I loved it from the minute we saw it. The colour is called Meteor and it’s black with mirror flecks (it looks like there is a bit of grey there too). I was concerned first picking a sparkly worktop as some of them in other stores looked a bit over the top and ‘plastic’ but I found this particular Quartz did not. I hope the sparkles will reflect the light nicely from our kitchen window and add a touch of glamour to our room.
Here’s a very similar type of quartz that we had picked:
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| Source: http://www.thegranitehouse.co.uk |
Just to give some background on quartz, it is a man made material. It consist of 90% of quartz (mineral) and 7% polymer resin. I did a lot of research online on quartz and the biggest benefit over granite seems to be that the patterns in quartz are consistent throughout because it is an engineered stone and also it is more durable to scratches and does not need to be sealed like granite. I found an excellent article on quartz online, see http://www.thekitchn.com/all-about-quartz-countertops-countertop-spotlight-166190.
So for now, all we can do is wait and hope everything will go as planned in the next few weeks (sounds a bit too optimistic doesn’t it?!). I will be also submitting a detailed review on Magnet shortly!
