Our 3rd Kitchen Renovation

We are now living in Melbourne but the packing and moving took up all of my time so I’m a little late with this post all about my new kitchen but here it is. This was a budget friendly renovation so that we could rent out of our house for as long as we are away. We were at first going to paint the kitchen white, replace appliances and the benchtops but the existing cabinetry was on its last legs so we decided a new kitchen (on a budget) was a better choice.

Here is how it looked after rip out. The team come in and pull everything out and are in and out in a few hours.

We chose Kitchenworks Belrose (again) as I knew they’d do an excellent job and they offer budget kitchens using melamine cabinetry and laminate counters. Their tradespeople are very experienced and reliable which is important and you are given a timeline with each trade and contact details and everything runs very smoothly. We had a very tight deadline as we wanted our house photographed and ready to show so we are glad that everyone kept to schedule. I don’t get any kickbacks from them for saying good things about their kitchens but I can honestly say Kitchworks do an excellent job, have attention to detail, keep up to date with the latest trends and deliver on time and budget. For the 3rd time they’ve delivered a really great kitchen and so much better than what I had in mind.

The cabinetry we chose is melamine and the colour is strata grey (by Polytec). We chose grey as the white melamine can show its age quickly (apparently) and the greys seemed popular. Now that I’ve lived with the grey kitchen I can say that it makes the space more interesting. The grey is lighter during the day and darker at night and its nice seeing it change. It worked well with the laminate benchtop, white tiles and stainless steel appliances.

The countertop is laminate (looks like wood but it really is laminate) and is a real showstopper. The whole lot came in about $800 and is beautiful to look at and work on. Its called Natural Halifax Oak and is available in Australia through Nikpol.

For the appliances we needed to keep it cheap and cheerful, all electric and thanks to some great sales on I paid $1200 for the oven, range, cooktop and dishwasher from Good Guys Castle Hill. They all work really well. Cooking package was by Omega. Installation was included in the kitchen quote.

Handles and pulls are from Marina Isles in Castle Hill who have a beautiful range. I’m so glad they were close by because I didn’t count how many knobs I needed so did a mad dash back there on installation day to grab a few more.

The sink is from Bunnings and around the $150 mark. Tap was from Restoration Online (Single Lever Mixer Tap from Bastowe for $183) and not expensive but not too cheap.

Tiles were from Beaumont Tiles Castle Hill – I had a last minute change of mind with the tiles and the longer tile in this style (called Agrestic) really does work better (if you’re going to lay in a subway style). These came in about $200. The colour is ivory (was just a bit softer than the white) and the size is 300×75.

These beautiful chopping boards were kindly sent to me by Byron Bay Chopping Boards and are beautiful to look at and beautiful to use. I had seen photos on Pinterest with the boards stacked up and just love how they look in the kitchen.

The flooring needed to be redone throughout the back half of downstairs as the cork was falling apart and was missing bits once the kitchen was ripped out. We went with a vinyl from Harvey Norman called Novocore which was the closest match to the flooring in the front half of the house. It went straight over the top of the cork and is easy to look after.

All up the kitchen, trades and appliances (not including the flooring) came in under $13,000 which was a great result. The space is really open and fresh and a big difference from the falling apart brown kitchen (which I’d still be cooking in if we weren’t moving interstate). We knew that a new kitchen would make the house easy to rent out and because we had to pay our own rent and bond down in Melbourne it was really important to have it rented out quickly and for the right price.

And I’m happy to report that we moved out on the Monday and new tenants moved in on the Friday. It was a great result and we are really happy with the finished kitchen. If I had more money I would have put an island in but we really had to keep to budget as we had other work to do on the house as well as the painting and flooring. The best part of pulling out the old kitchen was that we had more room to make a kitchen, living and dining area whereas before half the space was taken up by a kitchen.