Our
Projects

In September 2021 following zero travel (cheers Covid) we finally hit go on our huge kitchen and dining room remodel. We purchased the house in 2017 and it is your typical Edwardian terraced house. A long thin galley kitchen and thankfully at some point someone had added a (rather shabby) lean-to creating a utility. The layout left our dining room a little dark and under appreciated. As you may have gleaned from the food page on this website, I am massively into cooking and we both love entertaining so redoing the space was always on our hit list. Here is a brief(ish) description of what the project entailed. Also, for anyone considering it but perhaps intimidated by the prospect, it is important to know going into this that we were both remodel/building work virgins so can sympathise with how scary it really can be!

To enable us to create the large open plan, bright dining and kitchen space we both craved, we had to demolish two load bearing old external walls so we needed two large (and I mean large) steels. These were also over engineered to give us scope to go into the loft one day, a handy tip id recommend to anyone considering something similar to future proof your house. We didn’t know it at the time but these steels would become a major cause for stress and work, but more on that later!

When it came to choosing builders, id say that was perhaps the hardest and most frustrating at times. We knew we wanted it to be a local firm and that we wanted 3 quotes. What we didn’t realise is to fulfil that request, you have to have around 6/7 people over and every builder has their own suggestion that makes finalising the plan pretty hard. Having said that, a lot of them had good and interesting ideas that did eventually help us settle on a structural and functional space.

The kitchen design was a lot easier because I knew largely what I wanted. Most young girls dream of their wedding day, I dreamt of kitchen designs. The harder part was convincing my wife that dark olive green kitchen cabinets I had my heart set on were the way to go, thank god she agreed/loves me as much as she does 

I think the one thing we can both say we underestimated was how hard it was going to be to live without a kitchen. We had a pretty decent set up in the spare room and I am very proud of the fact that I cooked every meal in there (i.e. we didn’t give into takeaway temptation), but that again shows my love of food and cooking. I found it a challenge. We also have a fair few gadgets that made life easier. BUT I can say with absolute certainty…I will NEVER miss washing up in the bathtub.

Back to the work itself. The builders made short work of ripping out the kitchen, smashing down the walls and lean to and installing the steels. As with any project there were bumps and surprises along the way, but we had a contingency fund and good builders who were very good at communicating with us allowing us to make decisions relatively quickly so as to not derail the project. Once the steels were in and all the walls were down we were able to see for the first time what our space was going to look like and it was beyond exciting. The best day of my life so far (apart from the day I married my gorgeous wife) was when they came to install the quartz worktops.

Fast forward to late October and everything is installed and the walls are plastered. The flooring and finishing touches are due in a few days so we try and crack on with as much decorating as we can with as few obstacles as possible. Which brings me back to the steels. We always knew that we didn’t want to box in the steels with plasterboard because we could see their potential as being a feature, but we didn’t know how hard it was going to be to keep that dream. Having said that, looking at it now, we 100% made the right decision and it was SO worth it. The difficulty more came from the fact no homeowners seem to take this route so a nobody was really sure what we did or didn’t have to do. Luckily I am OCD and wasn’t going to wing it so I did TONS of research and read other blogs like this one. I then found a company that was so helpful and managed to work out exactly what paint we needed, how much and all the certifications we would need to get sign off. The paint itself though isn’t for the faint hearted. It is hard to apply and has rather potent fumes. My wife came home to me rather high on said fumes on more than one occasion so id recommend ventilation, even if it is end of October and raining outside!

The project was fully done and contractors out of the house by the first week of November. Flooring down, skirting in, new stairs completed, tiles laid, doors and windows sealed, pantry created, kitchen fully installed including plumbing and electrical second fix. Done! The ‘finished’ photos are but a week later after all the walls were given another coat of paint, the stairs were painted and varnished, new dining room furniture delivered and everything put into its new forever home. We even found time to go to a local house plant shop and get some gorgeous decoration bits.

To sum up, it was just over 2 months of chaos, frustration, dust and excitement that neither of us regret. We use the space majority of the day (so much so that the dining room is now our primary lounge) and entertaining and hosting has never been so enjoyable and easy. We are yet to know what financial impact the project has had on our house value, but if family, friend and neighbour comments have shown that we have created a space so enviable and functional that it is irrelevant, I AM NEVER MOVING!