We have all been there: you are having a quick tidy around and the next thing you know you have thrown away nearly £10,000’s worth of kitchen cabinets and worktops. Okay, so maybe we haven’t all been there, but some workers up in Newcastle recently found themselves inadvertently doing just that after removing a kitchen to install new electrical wiring for an unfortunate South Shields couple.
The couple, who described the range as their ‘kitchen for life’, were devastated when their bespoke cabinets and worktops became very expensive pieces of landfill after a series of unfortunate incidents led local bin men to mistake them for rubbish.
Unfortunate
The incident began innocuously enough with contractors from South Tyneside Homes removing the kitchen furniture to enable them to replace electrical wiring as part of their ‘Decent Homes’ initiative. So far, so good. However, to create extra space in the kitchen, the workers then moved the cabinets outside, where they placed them behind the house – right next to the bins.
In an example of very unfortunate timing and surprisingly meticulous attention to one’s work, a diligent binman collecting rubbish in the area mistook the cabinets for waste and took them away very shortly after.
The mistake wasn’t even spotted until the next day when the lady of the house, Ms Martin, started to sort through boxes, ready to return her kitchen to its former glory. ‘It wasn’t until the next day that I started sorting through boxes and things in the kitchen and noticed they weren’t anywhere in the house,’ she said.
Holding Their Hands Up
The couple got straight in touch with South Tyneside Homes who immediately accepted blame, offering a replacement kitchen as compensation. However, Ms Martin and her partner Mr McKeith do not feel that the options they have been offered match the value or quality of their now deceased dream kitchen, which had cost the couple £9,500 around five years ago. The couple were quoted as saying that they didn’t want a new kitchen – they would have been completely happy to have kept the one they had. Ms Martin said: ‘I love cooking and baking so I spend a lot of time in [the kitchen], and we wanted something that was going to last – that was meant to be our kitchen for life.’
Kitchens are such personal additions to homes that the couple’s reluctance to rush in and get any old replacement is perfectly understandable. When replacing a kitchen, it is not only style that needs to be taken into account but also how durable, practical and spacious a kitchen will be. Each homeowner will have very different needs from the next and a ‘dream kitchen’ for one person may be a nightmarish mess of impractical surfaces and cabinets for the next.
South Tyneside Homes are currently waiting to hear back from the couple to work out the best way to move forward, and have said that they are ‘working very hard to resolve the issue.’
Author Bio: Adam Howes is a freelance writer and blogger. He regularly writes articles about kitchens and home improvements, visiting websites such as www.solidwoodkitchencabinets.co.uk to stay up to date with all the latest industry news and developments.