Travel plans scuppered by dishwasher

We bought our house ‘cos of the view through the kitchen window. The rest of the interior wasn’t to our taste and has since forged us into frenetic DIY-ers!

In the past three years, we’ve stripped kilometers of wallpaper, ripped out ornamental arches and cornices and stroked numerous layers of paint onto the once bare concrete walls.

But through all of this, we’ve kept our budget on a diet. It has to be said … we muuuch prefer travelling!

Although a little jaded, the 10-year old kitchen was functional and the white stuff worked sufficiently well. We just couldn’t bring ourselves to throwing it all out and replacing it with something else, so we promised ourselves we’d redo the kitchen when the dishwasher and/or ovens needed replacing.

A couple of months ago the wear started showing. The first thing to go was the dishwasher’s on/off switch. Hello?? No dishwasher?? That won’t do. I’m unashamedly delighted with how much time (and probably water) it saves us every day. After kissing my honey good-morning, I mosey on over to unpack it … stroking the door to reveal its gleaming, glistening crockery and silvery knives and spoons.

Mercifully, we found a quick-and-easy workaround for the switch … jamming it with a toothpick! When wedged in at the right angle and depth, the machine purred along like a kitten snuggling against a feline belly. Discovering this required geometry often led to the toothpick being spat across the kitchen floor like a furious projectile and the machine shrugging to a reluctant stop.

We started perusing the Ikea 3d kitchen planner …

The oven was the first to sniff our betrayal and started complaining. Quietly at first, and then with a burning rubbery smell increased its crescendo until we could no longer hear ourselves think. Not being all that electrically minded, I searched and searched but couldn’t find the cause. Seemingly satisfied with its due attention, the oven quietened down again and carried on producing yummy meals.

Then it was time for our favourite pasttime – planing our next trip! We were thinking of Italy again for our summer vacation or perhaps camping in Switzerland? It was lovely being near Lake Garda last year, and we got a good tip for another lake nearby that was less crowded.

Our search for a camping site was interspersed with detailing our dream kitchen. Have you tried the 3d planner? It’s really quite cool. We’d shortlisted a couple of camping sites and were organising some time off when it happened.

Instead of welcoming us with gleaming crockery, the dishwasher presented a large puddle in the middle of our laminate floor. Water and laminated wood do not go hand in hand. So we couldn’t leave the dishes for overnight washing and kept a towel at the ready. The pools continued …

The combi-microwave oven decided that it too had had enough. The clock stopped displaying horizontal lines, leaving us guessing the cooking times and temperatures. Not too much of a problem for the oven function, but disastrous for getting any decent (combi)microwave results.

We quietly acknowledged the cross-roads we had reached – it was time to revamp our kitchen and make good use of our lovely view. Yet we still wanted to give our existing kitchen a second chance … perhaps there was someone else out there who was better at mixing screwdrivers with electrical currents? We placed an ad on a Dutch site and described the kitchen in full detail … including these “niggles”.

To our surprise, the response was overwhelming. 6 people had contacted us within a day. It seems that free is a very good price The first lady went out of her way to ensure the kitchen was hers, but fuelled perhaps by a “domestic” changed her mind at the last minute. Back to Marktplaats. Someone else asked for the top cupboards for their utilities room and then a kitchen renovator wanted the rest for his elderly parents. Awesome!

We were set for GO! Although exhausting, I’m amazed at how much we enjoyed doing it. We’ve been visualising our dream kitchen for 3 years, and after the meticulous planning and building it ourselves, it feels like home already (we’ve still got to internalise where the tea and tin opener are kept …)