The Kitchen- A Blank Slate

Renting an apartment in Berlin can be a little like buying a new house where they have only finished the exterior.  While this means that you get to design your apartment exactly how you want it, it also means that you are picking out lighting fixtures and kitchen sinks.  And this all involves some handy-work that I didn't plan on learning about until months and many paychecks after we bought our first house when we wanted to change some things.

The most interesting thing was the kitchen as it is quite important to me.  I love to cook!  I used suitcase space I had to bring recipes here (I also scanned a bunch as computer space takes up less room) and also packed measuring cups that aren't in metric (which you can also buy here apparently).  I was a bit excited to pick out everything in the kitchen, but the kitchen I really have planned costs more than what I'm willing to spend on a place we may live for only 3 years.  So we picked things based on economy as well as function while also picking things we don't hate.

This also meant not hiring IKEA to put all of our things together.  We thought at first it was a language barrier when we told them we saw the sink could be on either side of the counter it was in and they told us we could just change it later.  What about the hole for the faucet?  Ah, not a German/English problem, we don't realize how much work is involved.  We had to cut the hole for the sink.  So the first thing I ever drilled was a hole in the sink to put the special faucet cutter device into.  Can't just move the faucet over. 

 We also realized while putting thinks together that we had more boxes than we thought we should have.  The oven looks like it's put together, but it isn't.  We had to build the shelf it sits in and also install the stove part on top.  I'm just glad they required an electrician to wire it all in!

Now that we're up and running (enough at least for now), I'm ready to start cooking.  If only I had all of our kitchen gadgets!