It’s always easy to give suggestions on something that you have handled or dealt with yourself… for that reason I consider myself to be some kind of professional on the topic of kitchen cupboards and shelves.
We moved into a quite beautiful (but really old) household a couple of months ago and the home’s kitchen was (to put it mildly) the worst kitchen I have ever seen! I made my husband promise that as soon as we now have some spare money available, we would acquire an entire new kitchen! So low and behold, last month we decided that the time was right and began browsing the world-wide-web for shelving and cupboard companies. We compared a variety of quotes and finally found the perfect type at the perfect price… we were ready for action! If only we knew what we have been obtaining ourselves in to!
If I’ve learned only one thing from our new kitchen exercise, it is that assumption is the cause of numerous headaches! In my mind it made sense that the kitchen would be fully installed and ready for action as soon as the installer leaves the house. I just assumed that all the shelves would fit perfectly, the doors would open and close without trouble and the stove and oven would be connected and ready for action… Surprise surprise!
The very first rude awakening was realizing that gettingrid of the old kitchen shelves and cupboards was not part of the kitchen company’s duties! They had been prepared to do it, but at a ridiculous cost of course! Luckily 1 of hubby’s friends is a true handyman and he offered to take care of this for us in exchange for a couple of cocktails – what a bargain!
Our second hiccup occurred as soon as we realized that the new cupboards would not be the same size and that we would have to get rid of some of the existing tiles and tile in other areas once the cupboards have been in place again. We have been also informed that the installer’s duties ended at the shelves and cupboards and that he had nothing to do with the electricity needed for the stove and oven (which have been coincidentally not at the same location as in the original kitchen)! Our nightmare then continued in the form of an electrician with little to no clue as to what he was doingand he ended up installing the oven plug at the wrong height (because he assumed that our eye level oven was a two door oven and it was not… once again, assumptions!) and making such a mess of our electricity that each and every appliance that we switched on tripped the electricity!
And as if that’s not more than enough to deal with, the kitchen guy made a mistake when measuring our appliances and our stove ended up too big for the new cupboards… Quite an eventful and painful experience as you can see! The moral of the story is that new shelves can do wonders for a boring kitchen, but make sure of exactly what is included with and excluded from the installation of your new kitchen!