Over the years I’ve tended to stick with long term favourites in order to keep the contents of the larder under control, and avoid discoveries of things well past their use by date at the back of the fridge.
In The Little House of Concrete, a tight budget when the original structure went up meant there were certain things you'd take for granted in the average home that had to fall by the wayside, and over the past fourteen years we'd managed to catch up with most of them, with one substantial exception. We needed an oven.
For years we managed to get around not having an actual in-built roasting and baking device, first by avoiding those activities altogether, then by sitting a small combination grill and oven on the benchtop, but, eventually something had to be done because, for a start, if we ever look like wanting to sell prospective buyers are probably going to look at the kitchen, and the first thing they'd have noted would be the absence of an actual oven.
There isn't a dishwasher or a decent sized pantry either, but those matters were more or less an addendum to the oven question, and fitting an oven into an existing kitchen where there isn't a provision for one is likely to be a rather tricky exercise, so it was always going to be a matter of a whole new kitchen..
Now, having run considerably over the initial budgetary estimates in the process the LHoc Kitchen boasts all three, along with substantially enhanced work and storage space.
You can't see the oven and pantry in the accompanying photo but rest assured they're there.
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