Its a wrap!

 Okidoki... So like I said in the last blog, this is the kitchen Story!!

As I mentioned on yesterdays blog, I had been searching on trade me for few months for an exdemo or nearly new entire kitchen for sale for our new build and I found one and did a buy now. I love to recycle but I did not want just any old kitchen for our lovely energy efficient home! So the down side to my bargain kitchen was we had to get it out of the house in just under a week as the house was going to be demolished! So then the sleepless nights start worrying if the kitchen was goiong to be ok and how we were going to remove and pick up this massive kitchen with solid stone benches.

So after swapping my work day about on the wednesday and my hubby doing the same we set our alarms tuesday night ready for an early start on the wednesday. I must have been really stressing about it because I got less than 3 hours sleep that night, I think I was freaking out that I hadn't seen it and was it going to be good enough...was it the right colour and many other questions swimming about in my head!

But I should not have lost sleep over it as when we got to Auckland, the kitchen was a beautiful, Mielle appliances and the cupboards and doors were all soft close Blum hardware in really good condition. The nieghbour called over to us and told us that the kitchen was only put in 4 years ago and they spent over 30k on it, so I was very happy with my purchase. Maybe not the perfect colour but a proffesional respray would fix that and still be a bargain.

We got lots done, I labelled each unit giving them a number so if the shelving, doors or draws were packed away from its unit I would be able to easily match them up again. We even managed to move the small but very heavy stone bench out into the garage.

We did what we could working into the night with headlights ( no power or water on in the house) loaded the ute and trailer up with what we could and got home late...Big day. We realised we would need to hire a truck and get more manpower for the rest and it had to be on the Saturday. The most worrying this was how were we going to lift the two big stone benches as I had only just managed the small one with Gav my hubby. I made some calls to try and get stone bench companies to assist us in removing the benchtops and they reckoned stone benchtops like ours wiegh around 100kgs per sqm so would need 4 to 5 men and about 3 hours work but it was too short notice and I had no luck. EEK!

A good friend of ours Brian said he would come and help us on the Saturday thank goodness as our there was family 21st on Sat night and our son and his friends were preparing for that and couldn't help. So another sleepless night on Friday night alarm set for 5am didn't need that as I was awake from 1am anyway!!!

Picked up the truck at 6am and we were off... Solid day of heavy lifting, we decided to leave the odd shaped bench top behind and only take the longest one and the shortest one and I am not sure how we managed to get those benchtops into the truck but we did and I can honestly say its a huge thanks to Brian as there is no way we could have done it with out him! Brian was pretty done in by the end of the day and I had strained my wrist, Gav was the only one that seemed to be ok even though he was tired!

There was an unusual item that came with the kitchen which apeared to be retro, the paper work came with it too, it was a Nutone Kitchen Centre, it had loads of gadgets that came with it like blender thing, grater, mixer to name a few... The motor sits under the bech top and its hard wired in. I would love to hear from anyone that knows anything about this Nutone item!

We were supposed to be at the 21st for 7pm, we did not do too bad as we were only half an hour late and I had an amazing kitchen jam packed into a truck parked in my driveway at home, which we had to unload in the morning and get the truck back by 8am. My wrist was not good and I knew I would be no use trying to lift things and thankfully Gary our brother inlaw offered to come over at 6am to help unload while went to his place and stayed with my nephew Tommy. So great 21st party bed at 2am back up at 5.30 am off to Gary and Tommy's so Gary could do my heavy lifting with Gav and Brian. This is what my garage looks like now its stored. Very messy, I will work on that!!

And all this because I want to keep within my budget!! 

Thankyou to Rocky from Clearsite Demolition, so glad that he doesnt like to see things go to landfill. ( He sold us the kitchen) Rocky even let me have xtra bits and pieces including a light. That won't please the lighting company... Oops! Also and most importantly a massive thankyou to Brian and Gary. We could not have done this with out you guys.