Kitchen
A new Kitchen - and Lockdown!
Having moved in in September of 2019, and completed a lot of work to get to a minimum viable living space, we took a pause over Christmas before settling down to one of the most important - and likely most expensive - pieces of work. The Kitchen.
Red and Rotten
The original kitchen was a mixture of poor design, old furniture, and a bit of neglect. And some kind of obsession with the colour red.
We settled down to draw up a new design, having already made inroads by moving or changing two of the three doors that opened up into the space.
Our Kitchen from September 2019 to March 2020
We trunked the electrics as we knew they would move
Lino on top of (asbestos) tiles on top of original Quarry tiles
You can see the space impact of the inward opening doors
Armed with a £50 fridge and £70 cooker, courtesy of Facebook Marketplace, and a scrounged 2M long worktop courtesy of our sparky, we settled in to our Red Room for our first winter in the house. Like much of Murray Street, we seemed to make it worse before we made it better by pulling up the old Lino and allegedly Asbestos filled floor tiles to reveal the original Quarry tile floor. THis was deinitely not salvagable!
We also effected a few repairs on the ancient Kitchen Units with some modesty blocks, screws, and gaffer tape. For the majority of the Kitchen Electrics, we had simply trunked the wires to the walls, since at this stage we had no idea how we would lay out the room.
Ancient kitchen units and odd flooring aside, the room had some good features, namely the size (4.5M x 2.5M) and the massive airy window onto out Yarden. Recognising the value of natural light, we determined to keep the window, and to see if we coud improve on this even further by swapping the door for a part-glazed one. If we could make it open out onto the yard that would be even better!
This picture was take in early February, after we'd ripped out all of the old units and started prepping the walls, but before we'd swapped out the door.
Design Time
Designing the kitchen was a labour of love for us. With the house's colour themes established by a rug we had found in Mexico over Christmas, Julie (responsible for colours) wanted bright colourful floor tiles - which drove the general theming of the room.
The layout was more challenging, but the team at Wren Kitchens in York were super helpful - and we managed to creat a layout that included the Breakfast Bar we wanted.
The rip-out
As part of the new design we wanted a wider opening into the dining room, with an Archway rather than yet another door.
This required a new lintel and building regs checked. The old ceiling was overed with polystyrene tiles that were falling down, bringing the ceiling structure with them - so that needed to go as well.
This gave us free reign for lighting however, and made it easier to configure the extractor fan to extract air through a vent that ran right across the top of the room.
We also needed to get Britannia Preservation back in to look at installing a new DPC in the Kitchen. They hadn't been able to do so when we had the rest of downstairs done, as there were Kitchen units in the way, and we know we need a few months to save up (and mentally prepare) before starting on the Kitchen.
So - 19th March 2020, Kitchen gutted, DPC installed, we were all ready to go with the new kitchen!
Lockdown!
23rd March 2020: Boris Johnson announces the UK’s first national lockdown. People may only leave their homes for strictly limited reasons and the police are given powers to enforce the rules.
Tradesman are strictly banned from carrying out any work inside peoples homes. The pictures below were our lives for the next 3 months.
Where our Kitchen should have been...
..and where our Kitchen was!