Surviving the kitchen re-fit!

[OutIntoTheBlue]

Does anyone have any practical tips for surviving a kitchen re-fit? As in, the period when you're going to be left with no working kitchen while the old one is ripped out, and before the new one is put in? We're having a small extension, and knocking through the dining room into the kitchen, so de-camping into there with a microwave and a kettle is an option only until they knock the wall down. The thought of washing the pots in the bath and 4 of us living on ding-meals for weeks is making me reach for the vino and the building work hasn't started yet!

So any practical tips or microwave/slow-cooker recipes gratefully received!

My mum's builder set her up a temporary tap in the kitchen so she could at least get water - is that an option? (I think they left the old sink in situ for the first bit of the work?)

Ordinary rice cooks really well in the microwave. Couscous just needs a kettle. Bread and salad are both useful!

Pasta on a camping stove takes forever so perhaps learn how to do it in the microwave? Slow cooker sounds like it would be a good investment too.

Obviously find out how long the re-fit will take. We used our laundry room as a kitchen, it actually resembles a galley kitchen, with wall cupboards and sink. Kettle and microwave + bare essentials eating/cooking toolkit. All cooking was done on a camping stove and the barbecue (gas).

It worked well. Rather too well, I think. The builders saw we were getting along fine, so slowed down. I can't remember how long it took. It's all a blur now (last year, actually).:o

We had this when we had our kitchen extension built last year. We went straight back by 3m.

The dishwasher remained in situ which became the middle of the room, still plumbed in even after they took the old external wall down. The electric socket was hanging down from the ceiling and we duct taped it to the acro-prop holding up the wall above, and the old sink unit was left in place too until the last minute.

When we lost the drain for the dishwasher we just used a massive plastic samla tub from Ikea to drain it into! So we used duct tape to attach the pipe to the tub and emptied the tub every morning.

They then re-routed the cold water feed which was a pipe in the middle of the room, so it needed moving to the new external wall. And again we just moved the dishwasher, the plumber put a washing machine hose flexi pipe thing onto the new cold water feed, it meant the plasterer could get his water from there, and of course we could use it to still feed that dishwasher!!

When the kitchen was to be fitted we clearly had to lose the dishwasher at that stage so we went onto paper plates. I was making lots of cups of tea for the builders and to be honest I couldn't be bothered to wash up more stuff so good quality paper plates and plastic cutlery, all went in the bin. Felt very picnic like.

As we were putting in an induction hob, we bought the Andrew James 2 ring induction hob (have since used it to cook outside) and set up a temporary kitchen in the boy's playroom. We had a microwave, moved the fridge freezer into there and the induction hob plus the usual kettle and toaster.

To be quite honest, it was a very stress free build. My one piece of advice is when the kitchen is finished, and you have cleaned it, leave it a day and clean it again as that buidlers/joiner's dust does get everywhere. And even after you have cleaned it leaves a film of dust again.

We had everything in the living room - fridge/freezer, kettle, microwave, baby belling oven (loaned), kitchen table with essential utensils on and all the rest of the contents of the kitchen in boxes around the floor for over a month. Had to take stuff upstairs to wash up in bathroom, but coped fine. I'm told some manage better than others and I suspect those who are used to camping, as we are, will tend to cope better.

One thing we found lurking in the back of a cupboard which proved really useful was an electric steam cooker (had forgotten all about it - reckon it hadn't seen the light of day for decades). It was brilliant for steaming fish, fresh veg, cooking rice etc. all in one utensil that didn't take much space.