If you’ve been reading along for a while, you’ll know that when we moved into our house in December 2024, the kitchen was very much on the list. The house was built in 1993 and still has the original everything — which is actually fine in some rooms, but in a kitchen that gets used every single day, thirty years of wear is hard to overlook.
We replaced the flooring straight away when we moved in. It had carpet tiles, which were pretty gross. That was non-negotiable. But the rest of it we’ve been living with for the best part of two years, and I have had a lot of thoughts about all of it.
It’s finally done. Here’s what we changed and why.
What Was Actually Wrong With It
Let me tell you about the worktops. Half the kitchen had blue tiles — the kind with grout lines running through every surface. I scrubbed them. I put grout whitener on them. They looked okay for about a week and then went straight back to looking dirty, because that’s what grout does when you cook near it. Every time you wiped the surface down, crumbs would settle into the lines. Around the stove was worse — oil and bits of food working their way into every gap. It was one of those things that made the kitchen feel grubby no matter what I did.
The extractor fan deserves its own paragraph. I called it the portal to hell, and I stand by that. It glowed a very bright, very committed orange. It made a sound like something was wrong. And the light was wired to the fan, so if you wanted a bit of light in the kitchen on an evening, you had to have the full roar of the extractor too. That was not ideal.
The stove was thirty years old. It worked fine, honestly. But it was thirty years old and it looked it.
The sink was old and a bit grotty. I’d wanted to replace it with a ceramic one since we moved in.
And then there was the utility room. The units in there were in a bad way — drawers falling apart, water-damaged, stained. I used to avoid going in there because it just felt unpleasant. Which is a problem when your washing machine and tumble dryer live in it.
Getting It Done
We used a local company, which I’d recommend every time over a big chain. They knew what they were doing and they were straightforward to work with.
It took longer than any of us were expecting. Getting the old worktops out and lifting the tiled surfaces took a full day on its own — which nobody had quite anticipated. In total it was seven days of work spread across three weeks, which sounds a lot but the results are worth it.
What We’ve Got Now
The worktops. White marble laminate, and they look so much better. Easy to wipe down, no grout, no crumbs getting stuck anywhere. The whole kitchen looks cleaner just from this one change.
The sink. Ceramic, and it looks a lot smarter than the stainless steel one ever did. I’m delighted with it.
The hob. Gold. I love it. It was slightly indulgent but it’s the kind of thing you look at every day so it’s worth getting right.
The extractor fan. The portal to hell has been replaced. We can now turn the light on without the fan. I cannot overstate how much this has improved my evenings.
The utility room. Completely ripped out and started again. Same white marble laminate worktop as the kitchen, dark grey cupboards. It actually feels like a room you want to walk into now rather than one you want to walk back out of immediately.
The walls. I painted them myself. Haha, no I didn’t. I married a man to do jobs like that. I’d had my heart set on something stone-toned or warm brownish, but everything I tried looked too yellow against the wooden cupboards. In the end, I went with a cooler grey and I think it works really well. It’s calm and clean-looking without being cold.
What’s Still Left
We’re not quite over the line yet. The cooker hood still needs painting, and there’s the ceiling and the other side of the kitchen still to do. The utility room floor needs replacing too. So it’s not completely finished, but it’s far enough along that it already feels like a completely different room.
It’s so much brighter in there. So much cleaner-looking. After eleven months of working around a kitchen I found difficult to love, I actually enjoy being in it now.
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