Goodbye Old Kitchen

‘Decorative’ rustic chimney hood

Ever since we moved into our house, 3 years ago next month, we have been keen to replace the kitchen.  We knew when we viewed the house that we would not be happy with the kitchen for long.  It’s not our style, it’s too fussy and dark, plus it had seen better days.  There are plinths missing and there are lots of dust traps on the decorative carving.  It’s a nightmare to keep clean.  So after 3 years we finally have the money to realise our dream.

Dark and Dingy

Living with the kitchen for a few years has helped us crystallise what we really want from our space.  We have the advantage of having already refitted a kitchen at our last house. From that experience we’ve learnt a lot.  We know what sort of cupboards and cabinets we liked, what worked well, what didn’t and what we’d like more of.  Our larder cupboard was a big hit at the old place and we wished we’d had two as not all our food fitted into the one larder.  So this time we are having two.  Ditto to wide drawers.  We loved these before and now we are going to have two sets.

Utility room including coatrack

For a long time we couldn’t decide whether we wanted to knock the kitchen and utility into one.  As we have to walk through our utility room to get to the conservatory, it’s never been the sort of space where you could just hide things away behind a closed door.  Opening up the room means more space as we lose a closed up chimney breast from the old range and more light as there’s a big window in the utility.  The kitchen tends to be a bit dark as it is west-facing, but the sun is often hidden by the side of the neighbouring house.  The utility room window doesn’t suffer as badly with this and gets quite a lot of light.

As we are keeping the fireplace in the room above, we are having some steels put in to support the chimney and so it’s a major building job.  Work starts on Friday in earnest and I’m both dreading it and looking forward to it.  I’m not keen on the idea of camping out in our dining room while we have no kitchen.  That said I am longing to say goodbye to the hideous rustic chimney hood above our cooker.  I’m keen to have a hob on which all the burners work.  I’d like to have plinths on the bottom of my units, so that dropped items don’t roll underneath them.  Good riddance to the nasty handles that are quite easy to painfully catch yourself on.  Goodbye to cupboard doors that keep falling off.  Farewell old kitchen – I’m glad to see the back of you.