Today I thought I would let you into my life a bit more and share some details of the exciting project my husband and I have been planning for a while now. We are finally starting to renovate our kitchen and I thought I would bring you along on the process!

The History

As a bit of a back story, my husband and I bought our current house in December 2018. When we first viewed the house we walked out thinking this definitely was not the one. I think we were put off by the smell.

A few days after our first viewing I turned around to my husband and told him I couldn’t get the house out of my head and thought we should go back for a second viewing.

The second viewing was much better than the first. It was obvious the house needed lots of work but we could see the potential. We put in a low offer which got accepted and finally got the keys just before Christmas.

It took us two months before we could move in. In those first two months we did a massive amount of work on the house. From ripping out carpets and skirting boards to fumigating the entire house twice our families and friends worked with us to create a livable space for us to be able to move in.

Over the past two years we have slowly been renovating every room in the house to our taste. Now we have finally reached one of the last projects, the kitchen!

The Current Situation

Our current Kitchen is one of four rooms at the back of our house. It's a good size room that is south west facing. From the Kitchen there is a Lean-To which currently houses our washing machine and the back door which opens onto our deck.

Next door to the Kitchen is a very dark Dining Room, again it’s another good size room approximately. When we first moved into the house the Living Room and Dining Room were connected by a large archway. Fairly early on we decided we would rather have a large open plan kitchen and a smaller cosy Living Room to retreat to than the layout we bought. Therefore, one of our first house projects was to block up the archway between the two rooms.

The final room at the back of our house is a Sun Room attached to the Dining Room, it's lovely light filled room throughout the afternoon and evening. The original sliding doors separate the Dining Room and Sun Room. From old photographs of the house we think it was a glass conservatory which has been made into an insulated room.

One of our main issues with the current layout is the light. The sliding doors between the sun room and dining room seem to block a lot of the natural light making the Dining Room a very dark room which we don’t use. Again the Lean-To covers the largest window in the kitchen.

The Proposal

We hope to gain a light open plan living space that exposes our new kitchen, a living space and dining room which opens up onto a new deck.

The plan is to knock down the wall between the Kitchen and the Dining Room, the current Dining Room door will be blocked up and a stud wall added to build a small pantry in the current entry space.

The rest of the current Dining Room will form the new Kitchen with units along two walls, an island containing a sink and dishwasher will sit close to the dividing wall currently lays.

The sliding doors between the Sun Room and Dining Room will be taken out and the walls re-plastered to make a more open concept living space.

In the current kitchen the brickwork below the windows will be dropped and the windows replaced with french doors to provide more natural light into the back rooms.

The Lean-To will be knocked down and a new deck will be laid to span the length of the current Kitchen to provide a more usable outdoor living area.

We also plan to build a door from the current Kitchen to the Garage and the Garage divided to form a Laundry Room and store room space.

I can’t wait to see how the works progress and I hope you don’t mind being taken along with me on this journey.

I hope you a having a great day and I'll see you soon with an update!

Ju x