ELC kitchen erection nightmare or breeze?

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So last night the elves (my husband and I) did the thing I had been dreading. We put my daughter’s ELC cottage kitchen together (http://www.elc.co.uk/Wooden-Cottage-Kitchen—Red/136819,default,pd.html#q=cottage%20kitchen).

I had been worrying about it for a while. I could see us up until 4am Christmas Day morning doing it and, with a day of play and cooking to ‘look forward to’ I didn’t really fancy that.

So we bit the bullet as it were and began.

It should have been £150 but I got it in the sale in October for £100 (see I told you I had been worrying for a while). It is not reduced further to £75 grrrrr…

We started at 7.30pm. I opened the box-well that is a major job in flat-pack construction surely, and lay out the pieces.

We then spent ten minutes looking for a screw driver.

We began in earnest and I think the instructions broke you in gently. We had to put the taps and the hob plates onto the work top. Easy!

Then it was the part I was looking forward to most. We erected the back bit which included pegs to hang pans, a clock AND…..the curtains. One happy mama!

One unhappy dada though. As I ruched curtains, poor Daddy elf got to grips with the rest.

To be fair the instructions were quite easy to understand. We built the base unit where the oven and washing machine/storage cupboard goes.

The worst bit was understanding the “pull-out work surface for even more cooking fun.” It was fun.

The instructions showed us what to do underneath so that you got it right. The only problem was because it was underneath, you had to work out which was the right way when you turned it over. We did that bit wrong and had to re-do (cue a barrage of ‘you never listen,’ it’s you’re fault,’ ‘no it’s you’re fault,’ and the dog hiding under our kitchen table).

You then put all the components together, the only hitch here was to fix the top to the bottom, we had to undo the slide out work top and then screw that back in again.

It was worth it when we finished but we it took us 2 hours 40 minutes so I am SO glad we didn’t wait until Christmas Eve. You definitely need two people doing it.

Thankfully my mother-in-law lives on the other side of the farmhouse so we are hiding it there until Father Christmas comes.

This is our third Christmas as parents as no matter how many times I soothed Mr L about parents everywhere doing similar, he didn’t believe me (I bet nobody else does this etc etc). This was the largest thing we have bought her so I suppose it follows that it took the longest. I for one am just glad it is done. For once, my hurry, worry and urgency at getting it built was right.

However we did it, we got through! Enjoy the next few days of toy building everyone 🙂

 

*Please note in all the places I said ‘we’ above, I meant my husband! I just handed screws and generally pointed out his mistakes, oh and daydreamed about the games mummy Betty Boo would play.