The Kitchen

I visited the Kitchen company our builder uses. I have visited twice before and have never been fully happy at the service I received. The salesperson, for the purposes of this blog, I'll call her Emily, frustrated me. Every comment or question I made about a product, she'd say, "oh, that is dearer" or "that is really expensive" - let ME be the judge of what I can and cannot afford.

I had a sample clipping from a magazine of what I wanted. In our discussions Emily would say, "do you want a round edge bench top". Ah, SHOW ME what a round edge looks like. I had to continually ask to see things, such as the style of rubbish bin to go under the sink, the door handles, the size of the drawers and the profile of the doors. In other instances she showed me a catalogue and asked me to pick from that. Once again I said I need to physically see what I am choosing.

I was also told I would need to go and buy a rangehood as they did not deal with Bosch???? The builder had already told the kitchen company that they were to supply it. Since when did a customer need to go and buy their own rangehood?!!!

We have had a few difficulties in the layout of the kitchen. Emily begrudgingly said she could do certain things I asked. In the end, Emily thought we'd finished and all was finalised. However, I was concerned by the size of the kitchen. For example, the bench on the wall where the hotplates sit was supposed to be bigger than originally planned as the builder had lengthened the room to make the laundry area larger. However, in the kitchen maker's plans, the kitchen length was only 1500 mm instead of at least 1800.

After getting upset at the thought of having a small and ugly kitchen, I rang the builder and he said'd he'd fix things with the kitchen company and make sure the size of the kitchen was what he wanted.

Even though there are few things to be settled, we have chosen a very plain cupboard door. It is very square without a bevelled edge.

We have chosen to have the kitchen in high gloss to give it a modern feel. The cupboard range is Polytech in Cappuccino. I really like it.


We have chosen a double undermount sink. The sink has a removable drain tray so we can wash dishes and dry them without taking up all the space on the kitchen bench.

We have chosen a Quantum Quartz stone bench top in Royal Base. It is a little hard to see from the pic and I cannot enlarge it without distorting it. It is a cream colour with small flecks through it.