Give me your kitchen extension tips!

[sarahbanshee]

Work starts in 3 weeks on our kitchen extension; we are extending into the side return and on the back, so a fairly big piece of work and likely to last months. Excited but also daunted about living in a building site for so long.

Hit me up with your advice! What helped you get through? How did you manage meals etc? What should we think about that we might have missed?

Do you have kids? Do you have a separate entrance to the builders? Do you have other rooms downstairs that can be shut off?

We got them to plumb the washing machine into the bathroom, tumble dryer in hall. Bought a portable induction hob. We had a utility we set up as temp kitchen so had water and a sink.

We've got kids aged 14 and 11 - they'll be having school dinners while the work is going on.

We've got 2 downstairs rooms that won't be affected, so thinking we'll set up a mini kitchen in the dining room with microwave, kettle, fridge & portable hob in there. Washing up will have to happen in the bath. I don't think we will be able to plumb the washing machine into the bathroom, not sure there is room, how did that work?

Slow cooker. If you don’t have one, borrow or buy a cheap one.

Paper plates!

The builders can be really clever in plumbing machines into strange places - eg they can perhaps run a temporary pipe from washing machine into the bathroom waste pipes, putting the machine in the hallway. You have to be really specific in asking them because they won’t be thinking about stuff like this.

Try to isolate the work bit from the rest of the house, dust sheets etc.

Portable hob, slow cooker, airfryer - take your time to get the space set up as you want it because you’ll be using the space for longer than you plan! Box up and store the majority of your kitchen stuff elsewhere (shed, garage etc) and cut down on washing up as much as you can (paper plates, take out, microwaving vs pans).

somehow the weekends are the most depressing as there’s no work going on (so no progress) but so much of your house and garden is out of action - try to book weekends away, visiting others etc. find out if they are going to be moving the boiler because if so, you might be without hot water until that part is built and you need to plan for that.

it isn’t great, but once you’ve been in your new kitchen for a day or two you’ll almost forget it ever happened!

I batched cooked so many meals that by the time the kitchen was ripped out,the fridge and freezer were entirely full of meals (fridge meals to eat that week) - made the first few weeks a lot easier as the transition to having no kitchen was rather tough at first. Our washing machine and old sink unit were in the building site (aka the back part of the house) so we'd wash clothes on weekends and go into the building site every evening to wash up which made life a lot easier rather than washing up in the bath

We set up a temporary kitchen using camping equipment, microwave + mini hob. A few tips:

• get two washing up bowls, dirty stuff is piled in one + as you wash in the other. Otherwise you are forever transfering crockery.
• Breaking a glass in the bath is a nightmare when the kids need a bath before bed. Go plastic if you can! Picnic stuff is cheap in supermarkets this time of year.
• Constantly getting water from the bathroom is annoying. Our camping water dispenser was too big to refill in the bath. I got 2ltr wide necked gym water bottle from Amazon. Quick to refill from the bath tap, made life so much easier!
• find a shelf unit or even camping cupboard as a kitchen cupboard, otherwise you end up with shopping bags everywhere. And shop frequently rather than a huge shop
• Keep cooking simple or get a takeaway! Easy quick meals my kids liked were chicken/bacon fried rice (using micro rice), pasta with stir in sauce + toasted sandwiches (easy hot meal!)

Our builders plumbed removed some units and worktop from the old kitchen (including the sink) and intalled them temporary into another downstairs room, We borrowed a microwave which was also an oven and plug in portable hob riings. Our washing machine went in the garage.