Welcome all to my long awaited post about my spectacular kitchen… So my kitchen has been the reason for all my frustrations… Frustrations from calling for delivery and getting wrong food or super late cold food… Not being able to choose what goes in the dish and having a limit of 4 delivery restaurants, most being super extreme fast food (with super slow delivery)… An annoying amount of money being spent on food everyday because I have to eat out unless I want noodles with a cardboard flavour…
The most annoying thing of the whole situation is that I have basically no control over it and it’s absolutely 0% my fault. From day 1 of the renovation we got the kitchen, signed contract, paid the money, paid the electrical appliances, had appliances sent to the apartment… EVERYTHING has been ready for the kitchen for more than 3 months… Wait, something is my fault… I was IMMENSELY CATASTROPHICALLY EXTREMELY STUPID!!! I decided to get the kitchen from that place and decided to trust the kitchen guy…
The problem with the whole apartment though is that nobody has delivered what they promised… wait hang on, that’s the problem with Egypt, I cannot blame my beautiful apartment… If someone asked me to recommend a company that I used for anything in the apartment I would first recommend the person sells the apartment and moves to another country (Hahah just kidding, or maybe not!?)… Then I would recommend them to not trust ANYONE! You have to be a hawk and hover over everyone that works like a vacuum machine… Its time-consuming and annoying but its the ONLY way you will be able to tell them to do it correctly from the first time., and the only way to ensure that they work, and that they don’t take your sofa and tv on their way out!
So back to the kitchen… Its been over 4 months since we signed the contract for it to be delivered. It was promised after one month, so 3 months ago…. I’m STILL kitchenless… okay let me rephrase that. I have a kitchen BUT it’s for visual purposes only, it doesn’t work like a normal kitchen. I can store my plates and can officially say ‘yes I have a kitchen’… but I can’t cook any food, which is normally what happens in a kitchen. Its like having a bedroom where you can’t sleep!
While I was in Norway for christmas holidays the kitchen was installed. I was so excited to come back to my beautiful apartment with a finished kitchen… HAHAHAHA, again my IQ failing me, in thinking that the kitchen would be finished. They did spend 2 days installing it, a total of 12 hours… But in Egypt that means nothing because a hippopotamus in salt water could work faster…. So I got back and saw the kitchen…. What can I say… There was NOTHING right about the kitchen… Okay im lying… The colour was correct… I ordered white kitchen doors and dark grey boxes… that’s what was correct… and luckily the kitchen was located in the correct spot and not behind the tv…
The doors: At the kitchen guys office we checked all the doors and he had 2 white options. One square, super cheap looking and another rounded type. I chose the rounded door as it looked much more expensive and didn’t have the cheap border that looked dirty. He installed the square, cheap looking door…
The handles: I chose a long smooth rounded handle to match the door. I prefer curves than straight lines… Thats why I chose a rounded door and rounded handles. He didn’t have enough of the handles I ordered for my kitchen and was not going to make anymore. Why did he show me something he didn’t have?!? He would bring me the other option he had. I saw this option in the store and he kept pushing it on me but I refused to accept that ugly gross door handle. It looked like a cheap, plastic disco ball. He installed the cheap disco ball handles….
Granite: No option… He had one colour and that was light grey with dark spots… That’s what I got.. Magically, im surprised he didn’t bring blue concrete… He did however say that the granite people would come and measure the kitchen and then need 8 days to cut the granite. They arrived with the full granite pieces and cut it to fit the kitchen in my living room… YES…. He completely lied about that…
Shelves: I was asked at his office if I would like metal stands in the cupboard above the sink for plates and cutlery to dry. I told him NO, im not going to spend thousands of Egyptian pounds on a washing machine and then wash dishes by hand!? Were you born without a brain, sir? No, I just want loads of shelves to store things… Okey, no problem he said (probably laughing an evil laugh)… I opened the cupboard above the sink and found 2 metals stands… One for cutlery and one for plates… AAAAAAHHHHHHHHH, dont freaking ask me what I want if you are going to completely ignore my answer!! YOU COMPLETE FOOL!
Okay… Breathe…. One… Two…. THREE…. Four… Five… Breathe out…. This kitchen guy is going to give me 25o wrinkles on my forehead, a high level of stress and anger and grey hair… I might have to retire from exhaustion before starting to work with the amount of dog crap he is sending my way… I havent designed one bit of this kitchen… The only thing that is my choice is the colour… white and grey….
Light panels: Would you like light panels under the cupboards, above the counter? he asked me in his office. He told me this will cost extra, but I needed light so I told him YES…. When the kitchen was installed there were still red electrical wires hanging above the counter and when i turned the light switch on, there was no light… there was no lamp either!! My boyfriend confronted him about the light panel… He is not an electrician so he doesn’t do light panels… WHAT?? ummm what light panels did we pay for at your office? Oh this is just the wood panel that goes infront of the light YOU buy… so your telling me basically we paid for a PANEL… NOT A LIGHT PANEL… Remove the word light, because there is no freaking light in my kitchen now!!!! My boyfriend exploded… After all the things this guy did wrong, to finish the kitchen and say WE have to buy the LIGHT in the light panels, tipped my boyfriend over the edge… We went the next day to a shop and he bought us light panels…
I could go on and on about this stupid kitchen.. but it would be a long boring post.. We have called the kitchen guy more than a thousand times… We REALLY had to fight to get him to finish the kitchen… My boyfriend has called him every name under the sun to his face… It’s a shame that we have to get so angry and frustrated that we have to be mean towards him for him to just do his job, and do what we paid him for…
So im missing a few shelves in the kitchen… And the kitchen guy has to come back to remove wood that will not allow the glass kitchen stove to sit on the granite. Basically the kitchen guy didn’t calculate the wooden boxes the kitchen is made of correctly… WHAT A SURPRISE! So he has to fix that wood before they can install the stove and then I can start cooking. He also didn’t leave a hole for the extractor hoods electrical wire to be able to be plugged in above the wooden kitchen ceiling. That was a confusing sentence but as long as you understand that the extractor hood doesn’t work until the kitchen guy comes back to fix it. The only thing remaining is fighting to get the kitchen guy to come back and fix what he did wrong… Calling all Gods and super powers in the world.. Please help me..
I hate my kitchen… and thinking about it just makes me cry…
Femieshe 
Oh dear Lord… I completely can’t understand why you agreed to all this… am I wrong, or is there only one kitchen office in whole Cairo? No one could recommend other specialists for you? I feel sorry for your horrible experience.. I do know, that there is plenty of incompetence in renovation, installation world… but there are always options.. am I wrong? I live in Alex and I met very good and professional cabinet makers here, I could recommend at least two… I’ve seen their work.. couldn’t you get handles and countertops anywhere else? did they have to come from the same source? I guess at the end you and your husband did your best… anyhow.. you need to live with what you have… I truly hope you like it.. or at least you learn to like it with time.. I looked at your pics in other post and kitchen looks lovely, I like open concept… enjoy.. cheers from Alex -Agnes
Haha no, there are alot of kitchen offices in Cairo. We tried dealing with one of the expensive ones but it was impossible for them to give us a quote or answer our calls, or even call us back, so this was the guy we got the best first impression from! The problem is we paid too much too soon. So going to someone else when the half the kitchen was missing would mean we loose 90% of our money! We didnt know he was useless until we got half the kitchen installed and then it was too late to change. And as you probably have experienced, the customer is never right. It would just mean finding more imcompetent people to fix what was missing and then having to pay even more… If this was where I would be living for a while I would have fixed it. But we renovated this apartment knowing that in the end it will be a rental apartment, so as long as the kitchen works, im good with it! 🙂 Thank you!