Camden Kitchen Reveal. Bye bye parties, hello grown up cool

This kitchen has seen some things. If walls could chatter they would tell you about magazines I have published, evening cocktail shaking, Alice in Wonderland dress up after parties and MNEK trying alcohol for the first time whilst playing card drinking games with 1/4 of Rudimental 😂. There are stories…

After 11 long years as a party kitchen in Camden this little room has finally earnt it’s stripes and it’s time to grow up and get the TLC it deserves with a total make over. Somewhere down the bottom you’ll find a very tired before shot too.

We wanted a simple option with a quick turn around for this kitchen because the flat needed to be looking great and on the market ASAP.  The proceeds from here will fund the end of our reno in SE13. So with that in mind, almost the whole kitchen was bought from Ikea at 9.30pm just before it closed, in one sitting.

I’m a massive Ikea kitchen fan. For the money, they are excellent. We went for small square wall cupboards with a Herrestad door so as not to take up too much wall space and make the room feel cramped. For the main doors we chose Veddinge, nice and pale with a satin finish. We added our own handles, a total bargain from Amazon (10 for £13.99!)

The tap and sink are Ikea too, along with the walnut worktop which I love as it’s a herringbone design, my current favourite thing. The tap and sink were total bargains, the worktop a little less so but it was worth it as it makes the kitchen. Usually, we go for a marble or stone worktop but I really like the warmth the wood brings. It feels very welcoming and settled. It cleans up well and the dark wood works great with the gold. Then again, everything works wonderfully with gold in my opinion…

The finishing touches, very glam stools, are courtesy of Cult Furniture my go-to website for stools and many other things for that matter. I found my last kitchen stools from Cult too after searching for weeks to find the right thing. The sheer volume of affordable choice they have is amazing… I need more places for stools in my life!

These ones are the perfect mix of glam and practical. They have the foot bar that I ALWAYS look for in a stool, I can’t sit on a stool without somewhere to plant my feet. If you’re small like me the last thing you want is dangly legs when you’re sat down and moreover, it’s metal so you won’t get foot scuffs and uncleanable paint here. The top is a plush velvet. Gotta love a bit of velvet, and in the kitchen no less!

The table had to be small and the stools needed an even smaller footprint to take up minimal space. That being said, it still had to be a table you could have a meal at. I think we’ve hit it just right.

The floor is matched to the worktop and from Carpetright which only worked out at £100. They come and fit it for you in 20 minutes, it’s a great service that I’ve used a couple of times now.

Other little touches include the two frames, both with prints bought from design site, Creative Market. They were literally printed out on my printer. The lights under the cupboards are more Ikea greatness plus a handy wireless dimmer switch that went up with no trouble at all.

All appliances are from… you guessed it, Ikea.  It makes SUCH a difference when you’re working with a small space to have integrated appliances. And although some Ikea appliances can be expensive it’s often worth paying the extra if you’re going to go for integration to make sure doors fit right. We’ve had dishwashers in the past that simply don’t work with Ikea’s integrated system and the hassle is just not worth the saving of £50 after you take away the extra man-hours trying to work it out.

This kitchen took 3 days to put in and that’s mostly because we had a couple of issues with missing pieces and a builder that refused to look at the instructions (see, How to Fit an Ikea Kitchen post coming soon…). I’m sure we could have managed it in 2 if we were doing it ourselves!

The budget was £3,000 and we only just stepped over it. It’s made a hell of a difference to the size of the room, streamlining things and just giving it a whole new lease of life. It’s also worth pointing out that Ikea offer a 0% interest payment option that on a £3k kitchen works out at about £90 a month.

The before….