I absolutely loved taking the opportunity to welcome you to our home a few weeks ago, so today, I'm sharing our kitchen and dining area with you all. This space was one of the areas that we were keen to make some key changes to, so I can't wait to hear what you think of it!
Before we get started, if you missed my first post welcoming you to our home, you can catch up on that here.
I've often heard the kitchen being described as the heart of the home, so it was important that we get ours right. Our kitchen is technically a kitchen/diner, with the kitchen up one side of the room and the dining space on the other side. This is quite handy, as it makes the room seem much larger than it actually is as well as giving us options to expand the kitchen or try something different with the space in the future.
We were quite lucky, as all the kitchen fixtures and fittings were already in place when we moved in, including the fridge/freezer, oven, cupboards and worktops. Although they were perhaps not what we would have chosen, they all seemed to be in a pretty good condition so we gave them a thorough clean and decided to keep them. Not needing to buy the major appliances (a working washing machine was also left behind for us) gave us a little extra cash to play with, so we decided to invest in a dishwasher to make our lives that little bit easier!
Most of our crockery, utensils, cookware and small kitchen appliances were kindly donated to us or gifted to us by our wonderful friends and family. The tableware might not match and some of the appliances might be second-hand, but they work just fine for us and have given us a great starting block from which we can eventually work towards building our own collection of homeware.
The dining area was just an empty space when we moved in - except for an absolutely hideous low-hanging feature light. In the time between us buying the house and getting the light removed, multiple different people walked into it (it really was that low) and we knew that getting rid of it was a top priority! We replaced it with a functional silver spotlight to match the existing one in the kitchen.
We decided to keep the walls in the room as they were (plain white, like the rest of the house) as we needed to replace the flooring in the kitchen. The old flooring was this nasty cheap vinyl stuff, and one corner had peeled away from the floor leaving the rest all lumpy and unsightly. Before we moved all the furniture in, we got it replaced with smart laminate flooring in a pale grey colour which looked a thousand times better!
My colour scheme for the kitchen/diner was a gorgeous teal/turquoise blue and I spent a while looking around for various ways to incorporate the colour into the room. We got blinds for both windows, tea towels, bowls and oven gloves to match, as well as a gorgeous clock which I absolutely adore.
The mirror was actually another piece that the previous tenants had left behind - we found it languishing in the garage - so I got it out, dusted it down and painted the frame to match my chosen colour scheme. For a quick DIY job, I have to say it's not bad at all!
Our final part of the diner was the dining table itself. This was another donation but the table and chairs needed some TLC before they were ready to be used. Everything had a thorough clean but the seat coverings on the chairs were old, stained, and frankly, not very nice. After rummaging through homeware stores and DIY chains, I finally found some gorgeous blue cotton in the exact shade I wanted in a local craft shop. Recovering the chairs was a bit of a group effort, but in the end, the whole set looked brand new!
The dining area is now one of my favourite spaces in the whole house - it's crazy how just a few simple changes can have such a big effect.
What do you think of our kitchen? Let me know in the comments below!
I've often heard the kitchen being described as the heart of the home, so it was important that we get ours right. Our kitchen is technically a kitchen/diner, with the kitchen up one side of the room and the dining space on the other side. This is quite handy, as it makes the room seem much larger than it actually is as well as giving us options to expand the kitchen or try something different with the space in the future.
We were quite lucky, as all the kitchen fixtures and fittings were already in place when we moved in, including the fridge/freezer, oven, cupboards and worktops. Although they were perhaps not what we would have chosen, they all seemed to be in a pretty good condition so we gave them a thorough clean and decided to keep them. Not needing to buy the major appliances (a working washing machine was also left behind for us) gave us a little extra cash to play with, so we decided to invest in a dishwasher to make our lives that little bit easier!
Most of our crockery, utensils, cookware and small kitchen appliances were kindly donated to us or gifted to us by our wonderful friends and family. The tableware might not match and some of the appliances might be second-hand, but they work just fine for us and have given us a great starting block from which we can eventually work towards building our own collection of homeware.
The dining area was just an empty space when we moved in - except for an absolutely hideous low-hanging feature light. In the time between us buying the house and getting the light removed, multiple different people walked into it (it really was that low) and we knew that getting rid of it was a top priority! We replaced it with a functional silver spotlight to match the existing one in the kitchen.
We decided to keep the walls in the room as they were (plain white, like the rest of the house) as we needed to replace the flooring in the kitchen. The old flooring was this nasty cheap vinyl stuff, and one corner had peeled away from the floor leaving the rest all lumpy and unsightly. Before we moved all the furniture in, we got it replaced with smart laminate flooring in a pale grey colour which looked a thousand times better!
My colour scheme for the kitchen/diner was a gorgeous teal/turquoise blue and I spent a while looking around for various ways to incorporate the colour into the room. We got blinds for both windows, tea towels, bowls and oven gloves to match, as well as a gorgeous clock which I absolutely adore.
The mirror was actually another piece that the previous tenants had left behind - we found it languishing in the garage - so I got it out, dusted it down and painted the frame to match my chosen colour scheme. For a quick DIY job, I have to say it's not bad at all!
Our final part of the diner was the dining table itself. This was another donation but the table and chairs needed some TLC before they were ready to be used. Everything had a thorough clean but the seat coverings on the chairs were old, stained, and frankly, not very nice. After rummaging through homeware stores and DIY chains, I finally found some gorgeous blue cotton in the exact shade I wanted in a local craft shop. Recovering the chairs was a bit of a group effort, but in the end, the whole set looked brand new!
The dining area is now one of my favourite spaces in the whole house - it's crazy how just a few simple changes can have such a big effect.
What do you think of our kitchen? Let me know in the comments below!
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