KITCHEN: concept

It's over a year since I put this website online but the kitchen itself is now finally completed and it seemed appropriate that I should update the site with the final act of the saga.

April 2012: Our Alno kitchen from John Lewis with an Eames House Bird on the shelf.

A key element to the rationale for embarking on the whole extension project was our gloomy little kitchen. We were still living in London when we first starting looking at this house and we arranged a second viewing to figure out the supporting walls around the kitchen space. We loved the house but the gloomy little kitchen could have been a deal breaker.

February 2007: The original kitchen. This would have been even smaller before the larder in the far corner was knocked out by the previous owner.

The extension offered two key elements - a utility room to house the boiler and a glass roof to extend the kitchen and let in the light. We would also knock down the old pantry (behind the clock) to get rid of the L shape. This would give us a 5m x 4m space for our kitchen. This image was one of the pics we took at that second viewing and it was this one that almost put us off buying the house in the first place.

We wanted to install a dark oak floor in the kitchen area to continue the feel of the original oak floors in the rest of the house and we also wanted to open up the fireplace where the old boiler had been and install a wood burning stove. The idea was to have a spacious contemporary kitchen with the hard edged glass roof at one end but use the wooden floor and stove to help it relate to the quirky 1920s feel of the house. There is always a risk when trying to mix the old with the new but our kitchen design would be quite understated by contemporary standards so we were reasonably confident it would all hang together.

July 2007: These are the original plans of the house from 1926. The green walls show how the proposed kitchen would expand the original space.