Our Kitchen Experience

So, here's the long overdue kitchen experience entry. We've been using our brand new kitchen for at least four months now and I still feel like there is a need to share my experience because 1) just in case you are also giving your kitchen a makeover or going to have your kitchen renovated, I might be able to give you some advice and 2) It's actually the most exciting part of the house to get a makeover!

So just a recap, here's how our kitchen USED TO LOOK LIKE...

Damn cheap-looking, isn't it?

I can't say it was awful but I hate the colour a lot and the material used are simply of very low quality. Deardo and I, both food lovers, just couldn't handle it to have such a failed-looking kitchen in our lovely house.
Since Deardo agreed with my choice of white colour for our kitchen cabinets, it was easy for us when we went out to do our survey... Ah, if two places still considered  as survey!
Yeah... We only went to Ikea and Aino and decided on the former for one very obvious reason -- cheaper price. Including delivery fee, dismantling fee and installation fee, the entire kitchen cost us slightly over 10k. But the best part was they were having a special promotion for the kitchens where you get a gift card worth 10% of your total kitchen price (excluding the services fees), which we happily used to partially buy our gorgeous sofa! Check that sofa out here!

Looking excited to use the gift card to buy our sofa set!

We started our kitchen journey by seeing a consultant at Ikea, who drafted a design for us using their amazing and absolutely user-friendly software. Deardo was especially impressed as we got to log into our account to do any changes that we needed to and it was pretty simple to use! It can even give you a rough total of your bill based on what you've chosen to be used in your kitchen! Now this one I must admit it is way better than Aino, which had to take more than a week to call us back to see the design and the estimated price! We didn't even bother going back to them to see the design! Talk about efficiency!

My man discussing with the guy at Ikea on our kitchen design.

We then took about two weeks to finalised our design and materials and paid for everything necessary. But because apparently they only sell the cabinets and sinks, we need to get their contractor to come and install them for us. So the cabinets and sink were delivered much earlier before the busy contractor can come to fix them for us.

Our cabinets still in pieces were seen lying on our floor for at least one week...

Well that's not all, the contractor who put the cabinets up can only put cabinets! They don't do the table top! So we had to then call up the contractor to first come to measure our cabinets then go back and cut the table top which take them another week to come back to put it on! 

I call this the handicapped kitchen...

Obviously at this stage we were both quite frustrated. I mean that means not only were we getting our kitchen fully done very much later, but it also means we were kinda handicapped without being able to use the water from the sink! And talk about the mess that we had to clean over and over again every time these people left! I think it was even worst because we were already moved in so there was no way we were leaving the house messy! 

 

Those guys messing our kitchen up like playing with toys!

So yea after  the table top was finally done, the contractor for the cabinets came back to fix our sink... Not the end of the story yet!

Adding another mess for me to clean... LOL!

We had to call up another guy to put the hose for the hood for us, which obviously made another big mess to our house because of the drilling of the hole on the wall... Phew~~~!

When everything was finally done, not only did we seriously admire our kitchen happily, there was also a sense of relief after more than a month time just to get everything done! It was a really exhausting journey which took us longer than expected to get the kitchen done. I mean I'm not sure how other people do their kitchen but the fuss of calling contractors separately to arrange for them to come do their work was really tiring. I'm sure some professional kitchen cabinets makers can do everything without much of their costumers' effort! 

Still love our kitchen a lot! :D

Well I guess that was just Ikea's principal-- You are supposed to DIY! So cheap stuff comes with a price I guess. Having to say that, I have so far no complain about the beautiful kitchen honestly. So if you ask me, I would still say go ahead with Ikea, providing you have not move into your house yet and you can afford to have a messy house for about one month time and of course that means you must have a lot of annual leaves left cos you need to take quite a few days off from work just to fix your kitchen!

I know a lot of people, including ourselves were doubtful of Ikea's products but the truth is we have been buying a lot of stuff from Ikea! I mean we tried looking elsewhere but not only their prices are often (not all the time) cheaper, their design are also million times better than those at the random furniture shops! Well, quality wise, perhaps still early to say but so far okay lar! But hey our kitchen is under 25 years warranty so we aren't too worry! :p

So, what do you think about our kitchen?