Our new kitchen was completed a week ago.  Living without a kitchen with children is mental torture, not something that I would hope to repeat.  Feeding them becomes an ordeal, having beautiful fresh vegetables ripening at the allotment and not being able to do anything with them is frustrating, but it does pass, and we are back to enjoying good food with a better kitchen to prepare our meals in.

We decided to install an Ikea kitchen, not the most environmentally friendly option, and one that has already had me wondering whether we did the right thing.  So why did we do it?  We wanted a modern, fitted kitchen, and after looking at the options, we decided that as a company, Ikea had the best environmental philosophy.  The kitchen fitter we used suggested we buy our oak worktop from another FSC source, but we went for all A-rated appliances from Ikea’s Whirlpool range, and all of their kitchen cabinets, which they say are made from wood-chips from sustainable sources.

The end result looks good, we think, but from an environmental point of view and in retrospect, I think that we could have done better.