Meaning of "A gift. But major renovations would take so much time."?

Hello everyone. I am reading a novel, and I came across this expression. Could you please let me know its meaning?

The kitchen, like the entire apartment, hadn’t been touched up in decades. Her parents, she explained, had lived there until the day of the accident, and ever since, she’d never had the heart or the time to fix much. There were walls to be broken through, others to put up, wiring to pull out, so many things to be given away. To prove her point, she showed me the gas range and asked me to light it. “Don’t you just turn a knob or press something?” I asked. “No, you use this,” she said, taking out a match from a large matchbox. “Does this thing whistle when the water boils?” “No, it chimes.” She pointed at a very contempo-designed teakettle. A gift. But major renovations would take so much time.“Plus I don’t think I want it changed.” Her whole apartment, it occurred to me, was lying low too.

- André Aciman, Eight White Nights, Third Night

This is a novel published in the United States of America in 2010. This novel is narrated by the nameless male protagonist who meets Clara at a Christmas party in Manhattan. Now the protagonist is at Clara's house. Clara's parents had passed away in a car accident, so Clara is keeping the house as it was when her parents had been alive.

In this part, I wonder what the underlined expression means.

My wild guess is that "gift" means that someone presented a teakettle to Clara... But then I am not sure why "but" appears after this "gift", as if there is some logical connection that I am missing.

Thank you very much for your help.