behind the scenes – The Tempest House

Located in the sunny Gold Coast Meg was going to add an extension to the back of her house, but decided to use kaboodle to change the layout of her kitchen instead and make the most her space to create a larger eat-in style kitchen.

“We live in a small cottage that was starting to feel cramped and majorly lacking in storage. We toyed with the idea of adding an extension to the back of our house, but looked at the floorplan and realised we could reconfigure the kitchen and dining area to create a much larger eat-in style kitchen.”

Meg is an avid DIYer and has put a lot of effort into renovating her home, she plans to enjoy life in this home for years to come with her family.

“We plan on living in this home long term. We’ve spent five years renovating it and doing most of the work ourselves, I couldn’t bear to sell it!”

To create her English-cottage inspired kitchen, Meg opted for our paint your own doors range in an alpine profile so she could select the perfect shade. For a truly bespoke look and feel, Meg topped her cabinetry off with our versatile american oak benchtops that she stained walnut.

“We wanted to create an English-cottage inspired kitchen, so we chose traditional finishes like the paint your own doors in the alpine profile that we painted French Green by Porter’s Paints. They look like shaker-style doors and the green/grey paint colour looks colourful at times but also quite neutral. We also chose the american oak benchtop which we stained walnut, and absolutely love the warmth it adds to the kitchen. We love that it is a natural product and it will last forever as you can sand and refinish when required.”

The 3D kaboodle planner allowed Meg to easily visualise how her vision would come to life.

“I used the 3d kaboodle planner to design the space and had a lot of fun playing around with potential designs. It was so easy! The finished product looks exactly like the 3D rendering!

Meg and her husband felt confident enough to tackle most of the installation themselves* with the help of our easy to follow instructional videos.

“Kaboodle is DIY-friendly, we did a lot of the work ourselves including painting all the doors and draw fronts, assembling many of the cabinets, adding the doors and putting them into place. We had a builder demo out old kitchen and install the benchtop as we weren’t as confident cutting holes for the sink etc, however as it was a timber benchtop this could be done by a skilled DIYer. We watched some of kaboodle’s instructional videos too which really helped!”

Painting your own doors is a great option if you’re after a particular colour, or if you’d like to save even more on your renovation. Watch this tutorial to discover how to paint your own doors like a pro.

We were pleased to discover this was Megs second kaboodle kitchen renovation, and that she was able to re-use the cabinetry in her old kitchen for this renovation!

“This is our second kaboodle kitchen – we first renovated five years ago and were able to re-use our old kitchen cabinets as part of this renovation – proving how great the quality is! We’d recommend kaboodle to all our friends and family as you can get any look you want – from modern to traditional – for a great price.

Meg is loving all the extra storage in her new kaboodle kitchen, and it looks so good that her friends feel like they’re sitting in a café.

“The first I noticed was all the extra storage. The pantry is double the size of our old one so we can really stock up now and we have space to store absolutely everything – no more trips to the garage for small appliances! We also have more bench space which makes prepping easier and it just looks so beautiful I find myself spending a lot more time in there. A friend came over recently and said she felt like she was at a café having a coffee at the dining table in the eat-in kitchen! We are looking forward to hosting Christmas dinner this year, and having lots of friends around for dinner over the summer months.”

We hope you enjoyed hearing about Meg’s kaboodle kitchen transformation! To see more of Meg’s stunning English cottage inspired eat-in kitchen, view the full inspiration gallery.  If Meg’s renovation story has inspired you to get started on your own, check out our mykaboodle project tracker to help guide you through the process. For even more inspiration and ideas, visit our design blog or follow us on Instagram, Facebook and Pinterest.

*All kaboodle products are DIY-friendly, but you will need to contract a licenced tradesperson for all electrical and plumbing fit offs.