I’d been lovingly doing up the house for a couple of years and apart from a lick of paint, I had consciously not touched the kitchen. You see it just didn’t work. It was a big open space but not big enough to include a dining table or anything substantially functional. And it was cut off to the deck which is where I did so much entertaining. A renovation plan had been brewing…

HERE’S A REMINDER…

It wasn’t exactly hard to figure out that the wall dividing the kitchen area and “back” area had to go. It was blocking light and when removed, would produce a much more useful and sociable space. Plus I could give the fridge a proper home and create much needed storage for not only the kitchen but the house, as there wasn’t any! 

To say I workshopped how to re-work the space is an understatement. The ideal scenario would have been to move the bathroom to the current kitchen nook – i.e the area where the sink was. Thus creating a full house width room across the back. BUT as with everything, I just didn’t have the funds to extend to a new bathroom as well.

Maybe a galley kitchen running along the common wall with a banquette seating area where the kitchen sink was could work. But on taking full measurements and literally planning out cabinets on the floor with newspaper, it was too tight. So the kitchen was to stay put. 

LET THE FUN BEGIN…

With this one, I used a builder. It certainly wasn’t something I was skilled to do. But in order to reduce costs, I did as much prep-work as possible and my builder was happy for me to crack on.

I began with the stripping out of trims and gyprock and batons. The other big job was removing the tiles from inside the laundry area.

That wasn’t before I found a home for all my stuff. I think that was the hardest part!

The thing I found most fascinating was discovering the original “history” of the house. The fact that the doorway to the back section was originally a window and the linen press a doorway. I was hoping that I’d discover the bricks in original condition – I was keen on keeping the common wall as exposed brick but alas, they were blue and not in any shape to be stripped. 

We also figured out that the original kitchen ran along the common wall with a fireplace stove in the corner – you can see the void below where the chimney was removed. The chimney on the roof supports this theory! And that doorway was the kitchen window. Ohhhh. The laundry would have been the original loo. 

A not so joyous task was removing the ceramic tiles from the back area. They always lead you into a false sense of hope when the first couple come up easily then the rests refuse to budge. My trusty hammer drill came in very handy again here but boy, that was a task and a half. But hey, saved paying someone else to do it.