Hi hi! The reveal for our kitchen and living space renovation is FINALLY here. I am so sorry that it has taken so long to reveal - life well and truly has gotten in the way recently, but here we are now, and it has also given me some time to live in the space so I really can tell you all the things about it!

I have broken down the whole process - I know that it is a lot of information so feel free flick around the post, and if there is something that I have missed out, please let me know!

We were extremely lucky and got to work with some amazing companies throughout the process. I don't work with companies often at all, and when I do, they really have to be ones that I will very happily stand behind. Thank you so much to Sage Doors, Blum, ABI Interiors, and Hideaway Bins for providing products for our kitchen! All of which were ones that I was planning on using in our kitchen anyway. It is truly a dream to live in and having the most amazing high quality products in there makes the most incredible difference.

The Back Story - How we got the house

We kind of went about buying our first home a very backwards way. In 2020 we were living in our teeny NYC apartment where I was running my blog and my husband Rich (aka Adventure Dad) was running his design studio. I had been there for 7 years and Rich for 9 - we figured we would eventually move home, but it wasn't really on the cards, until the great 2020 shit show happened, and we realised that we really should think about moving home.

Both being from New Zealand the country choice was easy - we settled on Wellington as it would be a good place for Rich's business (Auckland would have likely been better but we were much more keen on Wellington). I am from Nelson and Rich is from Hawkes Bay, so Wellington is a great easy in between location. We both went to University here, but neither of us had lived here as adults, so it took a bit of working out what suited us best in terms of where to live and what we were looking for.

Rich had a separate design studio in NYC and we were originally looking for a place to live and then a separate commercial space to rent, then quickly realised that was a super dumb idea and we might as well just go for a place with the space for both of us to work from home, so we only had to focus on paying off our own mortgage.

So we started looking. At first I was just 'looking to see what is around', but I have zero chill so it didn't take long before my poor Dad was off to Wellington to go to open homes and auctions. We missed out on a few, which we were initially pretty sad about, until this magical house popped up online.

The house was a super weird layout, looked like it had been built by someone with their eyes closed and just going off good vibes, and had some definite quirks, but had the most amazing view overlooking an inlet, a house that could be fairly easily renovated (or so we thought), and a huge three car garage that Rich could use to set up his studio in.

We purchased the house in 2020 without seeing it in person ourselves (a bunch of family had seen it though and tbh I trust my Dad more than me to choose a good house), and then tenanted it until we moved home in June of 2021. We stayed with family until the start of September, when we moved in when our container arrived.

Once the novelty of our VERY OWN HOUSE wore off (to be honest I still think it hasn't), we started looking at renovating, thinking that we would start the process fairly quickly and get it done soon after moving in.

Lolz. We were so Naive. I love it so much now, but we learnt so, so much along the way - and I think it could be really helpful to share these things too, as we were pretty lost when it came to knowing what the process of renovating was! If you want to see more footage, videos etc that I took in real time, I have a renovation highlight on my Instagram page.

The Before - an incredibly dysfunctional space

While our house has an epic view, whoever built the original did not have structural integrity as their main priority. It was originally built in the 1950's, and went through two badly done renovations in the 1960s and again in the 1980s, so it was a bit of a mish mash, and nothing really made sense. The living space was really closed off, with a big wall closing off a pretty small and incredibly badly laid out kitchen.

The kitchen itself was a super strange situation - it had three pantrys / cupboards which was super weird, and none of them really made any sense. There were two smaller ones then one larger one which was the original house's bathroom. We then have a room which we call 'the cave' off the kitchen which used to be an old store room. It is exactly what it sounds like - really low ceiling, and a whole bunch of different textures on the walls. It was marketed as a bedroom but it's pretty yuck to have as a bedroom if you ask me.

I have added the images from the real estate listing so you can really see what we were dealing with. New Zealand houses are notoriously badly insulated and this house was no exception, so we certainly had our work cut out for us. The house had no under floor insulation (or where it did it wasn't good), and single glazed windows which would get quite wet from condensation in the winter and were super cold.

What we needed from our space

Our needs were slightly different when it came to our kitchen renovation. The kitchen is my work space, and I have a ton more kitchen 'stuff' than most people, and also use the space super heavily, so I needed a workspace that can keep up with a really hard testing day. Here's what I needed from my space:

• A large open workspace with no sinks, stove tops etc on so that I can spread out and work and also have testing space and shooting space.
• A bench top which isn't reflective to film and shoot on, but is also low maintenance
• Well organised kitchen drawers / cabinets where it is easy to see everything and grab what I need.
• A large sink which can fit a whole sheet pan in for washing and is nice and deep
• Space for two ovens (one wall oven, one range with stovetop) and a large fridge
• Lots of pantry storage space
• A light and bright workspace that is nice to work in, but also works great for entertaining.

In order to do this, we basically needed to rip everything out and start over. We decided to do a total kitchen remodel, and re-worked the whole thing.

The Process of a Huge Gut Renovation

When we first started I looked all over the place for resources which actually broke down the process and it was really hard to find any. Here is the process that we went through and our personal timeline:

Design - Because our house was a little wonky, we had to go through a full consent process which involved getting plans drawn up by an architect so that an Engineer could work on them, so that the builder could give us a ballpark cost estimate. For us, this took from about Jan 2022 - March 2023 by the time we finalised what we wanted and waited for things - we could have definitely expedited things if we needed to but we weren't in any huge rush. We got the main plans done first, and ended up making a few changes along the way as we worked out what was going on once the walls were off.

Demo - This was by far the quickest part. This involved ripping down walls and putting in structural support. This part only took 1-2 weeks out of the five months of renovation. We had electrician and plumber come in to cap off things and make it safe for renovating.

The Re-build - This was the part that took a while - building a house takes a lot of bits and pieces! The builders had to put in a bunch of beams to ensure that the house was structurally sound, along with fully re-building and re-lining a bunch of walls. We probably added on about 6 weeks here as we realised that the floors were in terrible shape, so needed to be almost fully re-done, which felt like a setback at the time but we wanted to put down a click-together floating laminate floor and in order for that to be done, the floor had to be flat and level. This also gave us the opportunity to properly insulate underneath the floors which has made a huge difference.

Wait for Windows - We had an unplanned pause while we were building - we decided mid way through to fully replace all the windows in the new renovated part of the house, including changing the layout of the huge windows across the front of the house. We had initially decided not to because of cost but found some rot in the wall around the windows so it made sense to just remove everything and get new windows and doors. While it was expensive I am so so glad that we did - raising up the height of the windows and door along the front of the house made such a huge huge difference. Turns out you can't just get windows from the window shop!

We also added in a window in our kitchen that was a sliding window, which we call the 'pizza window'. It means that we can set up our pizza oven on a shelf outside and launch straight into the oven from the kitchen. It's the best.

How did you live for five months without a kitchen?!

This was probably the most challenging part of the renovation - living for 5 months without a proper kitchen, especially when NZ houses are badly insulated and you develop recipes for a living.

We are really lucky and have a large garage that Rich uses for his Design Studio, so we were able to set up a makeshift kitchen up there. The stove that we purchased for the new kitchen is electricity powered so we moved it up, and set up a stove, shelf and work bench situation - we were even able to move the dishwasher up there! We took our laundry sink and were able to rig it up with a hose through the window.

The Outcome - My Dream Space!

Every tiny little hard thing was 1000 times worth it now that we have the most amazing Kitchen and living space that I could have ever asked for.

The kitchen itself is my actual dream - I have a huge uninterrupted countertop so I have more work space than I could ever ask for, which is so so perfect for working in. We worked really hard to make the kitchen extremely functional so two people could easily work in there but there was also a good work flow.

We kept things super open by not having any upper cabinets - the whole kitchen except for the cupboard under the sink is drawers, and we designed them super carefully so that everything has a place, and it all lives in spots that make sense.

We are super lucky to have a ton of storage - we kept one of the pantrys and turned it into a walk in pantry - we were able to raise the ceiling a little so it is super tall and has loads of shelving, a countertop for appliances, and a bunch of drawers for things like dried fruit and nuts, pasta, rice, snacks, and root vegetables. We went for shallow shelves so that it is easy to see everything - it is incredibly functional and I love going in there so much.

We also have a strange little room off of the kitchen that we call the cave which we have turned into storage for extra ingredients, cake pans etc that I don't need full access to all the time in the kitchen, appliances, a fridge and freezer (which are pink and I love!), and a laundry area. This room is super low in terms of the ceiling height (it used to be a shed!) but works perfectly for what we need it for.

Our living space we managed to fully open up and I love it so much. We ended up with a wall which we call the 'fat wall' which is instead of having to put a huge (expensive) beam across the house, and it turned out amazingly - we utilised the framing within the wall to turn it into cupboards (using fronts from Sage Doors and hardware from Blum) so we have a bunch of storage space in there, and even a little hole for the cats to use to go into a little room behind the fireplace for them to have their litter boxes so that we don't have them out in the open.

We did a bunch of work opening up the living space and I am so glad that we did - now the flow from one end of the house to the other is just amazing and it feels so huge and open while still having little separate areas within. One splurge we made was on a really lovely fire - we got a super tall beautiful one and it does the most amazing job heating up the whole house.

We decided to go with hard flooring throughout the entire house. I love the colour so much, and it is so much easier to clean - between three cats and my job there is a lot of vacuuming. It is so much quieter than I was expecting and feels really nice to walk on.

Things that we love

The renovation turned out so much better than I could have ever imagined that it would - we knew that it would be amazing, but not quite this amazing. I am still blown away every morning when I come downstairs and realise that I get to call this home.

Again, we were super lucky to have been asked to work with some companies for the kitchen - these are all companies that I would have worked with anyway, but I am super super grateful that we were able to receive product in exchange for coverage on my blog and social media. Thank you so much to Sage Doors, Blum Hardware, ABI interiors and Hideaway bins!

I truly believe that if it is within your budget, making really smart functional decisions in a kitchen makes the absolute world of difference.

A huge kitchen area that is super functional.

Every time I recipe test, film, or shoot in my kitchen I still cannot believe that this is my work space - we worked so hard to make it incredibly functional and I love it so much. I have two ovens in there - both a larger range and a smaller wall oven, which makes recipe testing a bunch of things at once just so easy.

The large workspace and super well organised drawers also make my life easy - everything has a spot to go and the kitchen can hold a ton of stuff while not being cluttered, and it is easy to clean away everything at the end of the day.

I also managed to have space for a speed rack which is one of those mobile racks that you see in bakeries etc and holds a ton of things - It is perfect for sliding sheet pans into to cool. I've wanted one in my kitchen for the longest time and it makes me so happy. I know that if a full sized one won't fit in your space you can get half sized ones too!

The most beautiful drawers and joinery.

We were super lucky to be able to work with Sage Doors on our kitchen. Sage Doors is a family run New Zealand business who make the most amazing drawer and cupboard fronts. I didn't realise what a huge difference having great quality drawer and cupboard fronts would make but it is low key life changing - they are so smooth to touch and really easy to keep clean, and they use a special technology to laser edge their panels so the edges of the drawers and cupboards are seamless, which means there's no glue and they look more like a lacquered door. I'm obsessed, and can tell they are going to absolutely last the test of time, which is so important for someone like me who works the kitchen so hard.

I love all things Sage Doors but the thing that I think that I love the most is the Optidoor panels that we put around our island and on the end panel of the kitchen. I wanted a light and bright kitchen with a pop of darkness but was worried keeping it plain might have made it look a teeny bit boring. Sage Doors make the most amazing textured panels which come in a ton of finishes and patterns which was the perfect solution - we went with the Missouri in the colour Bullet which is like a really dark charcoal colour, but they make so many variations and patterns. Our panel wraps around the kitchen island and looks great and provides a wee bit of interesting for your eyes. I love it so much.

Sage Doors also makes a few other amazing products that we didn't have space for in our kitchen, including the most beautiful roller doors I have ever seen.

A workhorse kitchen counter

Being both a food blogger and a geologist who knows a thing or two about how rocks work, I had a ton of specifications for my counter top. While I would have loved to go with a natural stone like granite or quartz, the price for the size that we needed was prohibitive, so we went for an engineered stone instead.

While marble countertops are beautiful, I would never personally put one in my kitchen - they are super high maintenance, scratch and stain easily, are hard to look after, and etch really badly if they get acid on them. If you're fine with that then by all means go ahead but it just wasn't what I wanted in my kitchen - I shot my videos on a piece of honed marble for years and even being super careful with it it was really banged up.

I also needed something with a matte or semi matte finish that wouldn't stain and was easy to shoot on while not being too reflective. We went with a Silestone countertop in the colour Jasmine Pearl, in a suede finish, which is manufactured like that rather than being honed after which can make them prone to staining. It has a sort of marble vibe to it, I love how subtle it is and how well it pairs with everything in the kitchen.

Drawers that slide like butter.

Again, I truly didn't know how life changing it was having good quality hardware on your drawers, especially when you are like me and are opening and closing them hundreds of times a day between emptying the dishwasher, cooking, recipe testing, etc.

For our drawer hardware, we worked with with Blum, who are a super lovely company and manufacture the most amazing hardware for almost anything that opens and closes. We were super lucky and and got to use their amazing products - they recommended the MERVIOBOX system for our drawers, which has been a gamechanger. These incredibly functional and minimalist drawers are the smoothest ever to pull out when you need something, and are incredibly stable and long lasting - I have a few drawers which have about 40kg worth of plates or pots and cast iron in them and the hardware takes it like a champ - you would have no idea that the drawer was so heavy. We went for the Orion Grey sides which look so good with the light grey drawer fronts.

An absolute unicorn in my kitchen is the push-to-open rubbish bin that we designed using Blum's SERVO-DRIVE. You push the front of the drawer and it has a motorised mechanism that smoothly pops the drawer out. You can close it by gently pushing it and it closes the rest of the way for you. This is a total game changer when you have dirty or wet hands and want to throw something out - being able to just push the drawer with my knee and not have to wipe or disinfect the drawer every time brings me joy so many times each day.

Blum also makes a ton of other amazing products, so if you're putting any sort of cupboard, drawer, or storage systems in your home, make sure that you check them out - there are a huge range of things for everyone. Their team is super supportive and willing to help guide you through every step of the way which I loved so much, as it can get quite overwhelming making decisions when it comes to things like drawer hardware.

A huge kitchen sink.

This one was super important to me too - the sink in the previous kitchen was really small, shallow, and made it extremely hard to properly wash things. We took along a half sized sheet pan to the store to measure to make sure I could put it flat into the sink to clean, and I wanted to make sure that it was deep enough to hold a ton of dishes.

We went with the Mercer Derby Single Bowl, and I love it so much - it is the perfect size, super easy to clean and does all the things that a sink should do (including being the perfect depth for acting as a makeshift bath for my niece). We under mounted the sink, which means that the sink is installed underneath the countertop rather than on top, which makes wiping mess off the bench into the sink super clean and easy.

We also installed an instant hot and cold water tap that we got off marketplace but it is an older version of the Zenith Hydrotap. Ours also does sparkling, but we are huge fizzy water drinkers and we don't find that the fizz is enough for us even after adjusting it a lot. We got a super good deal on it though but if I were to get one from new I would only install the hot and cold. The instant hot water is low key life changing and I use it all the time - not just for hot drinks but it's amazing for all sorts of things.

A beautiful kitchen tap.

If you have a great sink, then you have to make sure that you have a great tap to go with it. We ended up with the Elyssian Sensor Commercial Pull-Out Mixer from ABI, who we were super lucky to collaborate on this project with. I know I've said it a bunch, but, life changing. It is not only super beautiful but the pull-out function isn't the slightest bit clunky (this is key for a pull-out tap IMO) and has a rain shower function which I use all the time for doing the dishes and cleaning the sink. I probably do more dishes than the average human and so I have very high expectations when it comes to a kitchen tap and this one ticks all the boxes on my imaginary 'what I need from a kitchen tap' list.

A slightly extra little secret function that the tap has (but well worth it as far as I am concerned) is the sensor on the side. As someone who does a little washy washy of my hands about 50 times a day, if my hands are super dirty I am able to just turn on the tap by waving my hand to the side of the sensor rather than having to turn on the tap itself. I love this function so much and use it a ton.

Drawer pulls you don't bang your legs on.

We went with the brushed brass which is super beautiful and also matches the ABI Rappana drawer pulls that we installed. They are super subtle and go perfectly with the drawer fronts both in the kitchen and the pantry, but are substantial enough that you're not fumbling to open the drawer. They sit super politely and don't poke out past the countertop which is essential when you're a bit clumsy like me and tend to bang your legs on things. The edges are perfectly rounded, not sharp. Again, they are one of those things that you don't realise make such a huge difference until you have a good quality set of them installed.

A super efficient waste system.

I'm going to say it again - life changing. Before we renovated we had a few large stand-alone bins in the pantry and they were honestly just annoying. They were too big, so by the time that they got full they smelt gross and were hard to empty, and I hated cleaning the outside of them and around them.

Two Ovens.

This is definitely a niche need, but having two ovens has totally transformed my workflow. Often waiting for oven space is the thing that holds up the recipe development process, and I like to often test things at two temperatures. Two ovens means I can be far more efficient when I do work.

We purchased the ovens before we started the renovation as the existing oven in the kitchen wasn't what I needed for work. We went with a wall oven and a large range, both electric (which is the norm for ovens in Nz, gas ovens are super rare, however lots of people have a gas stovetop or range paired with an electric oven)

For the wall oven I chose the Smeg Pyrolytic Oven, which is my absolute workhorse. I needed something with a digital control (rather than an analog dial), and it heats up super quickly and holds heat amazingly.

For the range I wanted something a bit larger so that I could have a nice large stovetop, and we went with the Smeg Portofino which is 900mm wide. Our house isn't fitted for a gas top and I wanted something where I could easily know that I hadn't left the stove on (ADHD life), so we spent a little extra and went with an induction top. It took some getting used to (it is FAST), but I love it, and our pots and pans were already induction capable.

One other thing that we wanted to make sure was good quality in the kitchen was the rangehood above the stove. We lived with truly the worst extraction system (if you can even call it that) in NYC and it was always on our list. We went with the Falmec Siena - I especially love how easy it is to take apart and wash the parts in the dishwasher. Just the best.

Things that we would have changed / what we learnt

On the whole, there wasn't really many things that we would have changed. We definitely learnt a whole lot, and absolutely spent more than we were planning to, but every change and decision that we made has been 100% worth it.

The main one is that we were a bit Naive going into it in terms of how long things would take, which is 100% on us. The builders and tradies did the most amazing job. We definitely came across a few hurdles - mainly needing to add additional time and money into fixing the floor in order to be able to lay the laminate, and having an unexpected pause when we waited for the windows, but in the grand scheme of things, aside from accounting for time for those things and maybe deciding to do the windows right from the get go, I wouldn't have changed anything.

Make sure you're prepared for it to get a bit hectic - renovations definitely aren't for the faint hearted but it is so so worth it!

Budgeting - What was the cost breakdown?!

I always find this sort of thing super super interesting, and Rich is a numbers guy, so he tracked all of our costs and put together a spreadsheet so we could see the budget breakdown within the project.

Obviously this won't be the same for every project - we had a ton of structural work to do on the house, so a huge chunk of our budget went toward the builders, which makes sense. Each project will be different but here is our specific breakdown. I feel weird talking about specific budget because everyone is going to be different so I have just included the percentages on what we spent below!

We did end up going over our initial budget by quite a bit, but this is our forever home so they were changes that we were comfortable making.

Timeline of our Project

Here is the general timeline of our specific project - others may go much faster or slower depending on builder availability, how many builders you have (we had two most of the time), the scope of the overall job, materials, how wonky your house is etc but this is what happened for us. Remember that we did an entire downstairs renovation comprising of both the kitchen and two living spaces, so this timing reflects that.

Sept 2021: Move into the house, have initial meeting with builder and engineer, establish that we need plans and engineering done for consent and builder plans before anything goes ahead

Jan 2022: Start process for making plans (we were in no rush), get architect to draw up plans, plan consent, consult with engineer, etc. Get in touch with builder to lock in a rough ballpark of what needs to be done and when we can start.

Late 2022: Work on generalised kitchen design, work on ideas for layout of the house etc.

March 2023: Begin Demo. Electrician and plumber cap off so that demolition can start. Builders remove walls and lining, along with any walls that are being deleted in the living space.

March - Early June 2023: Builders on site working on re-framing out the walls, adding in structural beams to account for deleted load bearing walls, fixing foundations of the house, repairing floors, etc etc.

Early June - Mid July 2023: Stop to wait for new windows and doors to be ordered and manufactured after we found rot in the framing and decided to fully replace the windows and door with new ones.

Mid July - Mid August 2023: Building was finished - installation of windows and doors, flooring finished etc.

August - Sept 2023: Builders finished, plastering and painting done, installation of flooring, kitchen and pantry cabinets and drawers, countertop and sink / tap, installation of rangehood and backsplash.

Sept 2023: Move back in! We still had a ton to finish off but we were SO ready to be in our new space.

List of Appliances / other products used in the house

• Paint Colour - we went with 'Rice Cake' by Resene in the entire downstairs area, including on the ceiling. We painted ourselves which saved us a ton of money.
• Fridge brand - Samsung French Door - I read a bunch of stuff about issues with the plumbed in version so we went for a non plumbed one and haven't had any issues
• Countertop brand - Silestone in the finish 'Pearl Jasmine' which we got in a 'suede' finish. We went through Trethewey Stone in Lower Hutt but I know that a lot of countertop manufacturers work with Silestone and other engineered stone.
• Lighting - Flos Zero Track for the track lighting in the kitchen and the living space. This was definitely a splurge, but we are super happy with what we ended up with. We installed three Flos Shadow 4 lights on the sink side of the kitchen to help provide downward lighting onto that area.
• Furniture - Both our couches are from Freedom Furniture, the coffee table was from Marketplace, and the Eames Lounger we purchased before we left NYC and brought it back with us.
• Fireplace - Spatherm Freestander fire place. This was a splurge but we love how it looks in the space and it is incredibly efficient.
• Cushions - Most of them are from Citta.
• Boucle Chair - we got this on sale from Farmers and we love it - it swivels which makes it super versatile.
• Flooring - we used the Pergo Flooring 'Drammen' in Sandwave Oak, which is a laminate veneer. It looks incredibly realistic, and is really hard wearing and quiet to walk on. We are planning on putting it throughout the entire house.
• Art in the kitchen - the beautiful ceramic 'macaroni' was made by the super clever Felicity from Wundaire. I love how it adds an amazing pop of colour to everything.

Let me know if you have any questions and as always, thank you so much for following along! I have loved sharing my space with you and will continue to update as we renovate more!

Erin xx