Second hand kitchenalia

Posted by louisa on Tuesday 1 March 2011 in charity shopping, frugal | 7 comments

Piper, who writes about The Frugal Life on MSN, has asked: Would you fit your kitchen out in second hand items or do you insist on brand new?. I started to reply on Twitter but quickly ran out of characters!

We joke that our house is “the house that eBay” built after my numerous purchases on the auction site in the months after we bought our new house – and the kitchen was one of the main recipients of that. We replaced the very dated, dark green hob & plastic sink with eBay specials – less than £20 each for a very good quality stainless steel Smeg hob (and collected from less than a mile away!), and a white ceramic farmhouse sink with taps & waste — they really transformed the kitchen, making it a lot brighter & easier to use/clean. I’m currently looking out for a new oven (since ours is old and playing up) – and that’ll be a used but in good condition one from eBay too.

The kitchen itself was installed by the house’s previous owners in the early-mid 1990s – it’s a bit dated/not our style and also the cupboards in the small extension don’t match the rest – but it’s fine. We might replace the cupboard doors at some point – but I imagine that’ll only happen if a perfect set comes up on eBay/Freecycle or is heavily, heavily reduced at a shop (such as ex-display). The previous owners also left their fridge, freezer, microwave & dishwasher – we’re going to swap out the separate fridge & freezer with our old stacked one when our coal hole is finally turned into a utility room, but that old one was also secondhand — a freebie from a relative upgrading their kitchen.

Most of our crockery is a retro set my mum & dad used when I was little – we got what remained of a dinner & coffee set off them a couple of years ago and have been adding to it from charity shop finds ever since. The best charity shop find was a complete dinner set in the same design but a different base colour (cream instead of mustard yellow) – for £3. Other random plates & bowls were charity shop finds including the most chintzy plate I’ve ever seen, which John hates but I think is perfect for cakes.

Our most commonly used pans were a cheap set my brother bought to take to university in 1995 – he returned from uni with them and I took them when I moved out of home in 1998 and have been using them ever since. Similarly, we’ve got a small casserole dish that was given to my mum and dad as a wedding present when they married in 1974 (retro chic a go go!).

We have two sets of scales – both from charity shops. Our pots for wooden spoons etc are old school lidless crock pots – 40? 50 years old?. Our two small teapots are a hand-me-down and a charity shop find respectively. Our cereal bowls are little Chinese soup bowls from someone emptying out a store at a restaurant. Our blender & pasta maker & blender were both unwanted re-gifts. Our fruit bowl came from a charity shop. Our former egg storage chicken was a charity shop purchase too – but she’s just too small for our egg collection these days!

So would I fit out our kitchen out in second hand items? umm, yes!