DoUpDiary #18 : Old Kitchens – Don’t skip em, sell ’em!

After 36 hrs in London away from home/site/chaos, I’m back and thrown right back into a mad week. The original kitchen which straddled the main house and the West Wing has now completely gone, partly as half was demolished when the West Wing was knocked down, and now this week as the ceiling to the remaining section which sits in the central core of the house is to be kicked in ready for a lowered ceiling (that’s the room behind those french doors above).

I hate hate hate throwing anything away, just ask Mr M, who calls me Steptoe, the cheeky monkey. So pictures were duly taken and uploaded to eBay along with a description of the units, sizes and a price, £295, pretty good for 16 units and a fully working gas hob & hood. And guess what, it sold straight away, literally overnight.

We took it out carefully and washed it all down outside. This image above brings a whole new meaning to the phrase kitchen garden. I really wasn’t convinced it would go, with kitchens being so particular and designed for one space but at 16 units in total there was some give and take in what could go where if an intelligent design minded type was looking. And fabulously, there was one looking, living just around the corner from us, so not only did the kitchen units not go to waste but they travelled less than a mile to their new home #kitchenmiles 🙂

My tips for selling your old kitchen?

1. Clean the kitchen inside and out and get rid of everything from the surfaces to get better images
2. Then get some good, light, bright and clear pictures, with doors both open and closed so potential buyers can see shelving etc.
3. Measure and list clearly each unit so buyers can work out if they’ll fit in their space.
4. Note any damage
5. List what’s not included if it happens to be in the pictures
6. Go for a reasonable price, eBay actually gives you an idea of what’s sold already at what prices.
7. I put a Buy It Now price on, you don’t want your kitchen going for £3.50 😉
8. Go for it!

So that was the upside. The downside? We then had to shoehorn a workable kitchen into my already packed office, conjuring space where there was none. Then get a huge fridge freezer & kitchen table out of the old kitchen room or they’d be destroyed by the falling ceiling. Then reroute all the water in the house using plastic pipe around the outside of the building to ensure we still had water to the loo and the single remaining basin in our bedroom. Oh my god. This is insanity. But we’re in it now, there’s no turning back!!

No gourmet cooking here for a while eh?