I am so delighted to say that after waiting ten years to renovate the kitchen/diner area of our period house, plans are now underway to completely transform this space and turn it into an area that elevates our home and works for us as a family. I could also say just having it working full stop would be a great benefit! I recently found out that this kitchen was installed in 1997 - almost thirty years ago - so, as you can imagine, many parts of it are currently unusable.

Even though I have spent the best part of eight years writing about interiors and feverishly decorating this house, never once have my husband and I embarked on a renovation project. Our first home - a North London townhouse - never needed anything structurally done in the time that we lived there. This home, now lived in by us for the past 10 years, could have done with the kitchen being renovated a year or two after we moved in. However, time/money/circumstance meant that it wasn’t something we could realistically consider doing until now.

As reno virgins/beginners (however you want to put it), I thought it would be good to document the entire process from start to finish here on the blog. So, my ‘kitchen renovation diaries’ from our Essex home start with this post. I want these posts to be honest, open and frank about costs, issues, the design process and all the pros and cons of the project. I think that as a newbie renovator, it would be good to record the work for anyone who might be thinking of doing the same thing. I also want to talk about the problems that we face renovating and extending an older property, as a lot of renovations and extensions that we see documented online appear to be on newer builds with more space and fewer restrictions in place.

So, what have we decided to do and what have we done so far?

The kitchen now - what’s wrong and why renovate rather than replace?
The end goal
Starting points: Getting an architect, having a measured survey and looking at the drains.
Costs so far
What’s next?

The Kitchen Now

Here are a couple of photos of our kitchen / adjoining dining space as it looks now. It’s one long room divided by a stepped floor and a curved arch that consists of our dining table and two alcoves around a fireplace at one end, alongside a kitchen area towards the back of the house.

The kitchen units were handcrafted from wood, standing the test of time. I can’t imagine a modern high street kitchen lasting almost thirty years, but they creak as the hinges are rusty, the doors don’t shut, plus they are all so small in size - they can’t even accommodate frying pans! We also have a significant amount of rot at floor level, so the cabinet wood is disintegrating. We have a lot of water ingress around the rear doors and a problem with damp that we have identified as the patio outside being laid higher than the floor inside (this was here when we moved in and will be pulled up as part of the reno).

As well as many fixtures and fittings not working and being broken, the whole layout of this basement area is difficult and frustrating. There never seems to be enough work surfaces, there is no space to accommodate a tumble dryer (which is why a freestanding one sits behind the door in the dining space), while storage space has not been considered.

If you would like to see all our kitchen flaws in full, I did post a short video here on my Instagram!

Because of the water ingress, structural issues, patio problems and bad layout, we have decided to knock it all down rather than just install a new kitchen to make the most of this area. We will be employing a rubbish removal company in London to take away all this building waste.

Then, we would like to extend out, past the current kitchen doors and at the side of the house, if possible, to create a larger space. There is a balcony that sits above the rear kitchen doors and we will be removing and replacing it as part of the rebuild, as well as reconfiguring part of the hallway in the basement to obtain more storage room.

The end goal

So, what's the end goal? I would love a larger space that works better for us as a busy family and doesn’t let the rest of the house down. I want to create a really lovely kitchen/diner that is sympathetic to the age of our Georgian house and make the most of the views of the trees out the back. I’d like to add colour, but more importantly, I’d like it to have a modern heritage feel that is classic and timeless. Here are just a couple of my ‘inspirational kitchen extension’ images that I have saved on Pinterest; what I hope we can achieve in our own home!

Starting points

Having never renovated, I had no idea where to start. I thought the best place would be to find an architect who would share my vision and have a similar taste, who I could be confident would understand exactly what I wanted to achieve and could suggest layout and building ideas to us that we never would have thought about! This was actually quite easy for me as I already had an architect in mind whom I had discovered on Instagram. Mel Bax’s own kitchen - with its vibrant red curved doors - first caught my eye; I then looked at her portfolio of work that contained considered extension, alteration and renovation projects. A recent addition to The List by House & Garden and already working on a personal project with leading designer Pandora Taylor, I was delighted when she agreed to take on our home!

mel architect — *Mel. Archtect’s kitchen. Photos by* *@emilyr.marshall*

It was Mel who informed us that our next steps were to get a measured survey of the house from which she could work. It was also important to have someone come and assess the drains so we knew where the sewage work was flowing to and from, and if this would put any limitations on the design. Using her contacts, we had our entire house measured up; I loved getting the drawings - they were so interesting to look at!

This is the floorplan of the area of renovation, including an area of the basement hallway.

Costs so far

Measured survey = £1250
Build Over CCTV drain survey = £400 (but as they discovered blockage issues that needed to be rectified before the survey could be carried out, we had to have extra work done, taking the overall cost to £860)
Our architect fees are ongoing with the project, but this stage 1 phase, including initial drawings, can roughly be divided down to between 3-4k.

What’s next?

We will be working with our architect on the design development (nailing down the placement of joinery and layout), and we will have to consult a structural engineer to make sure the property can handle the amendments. I’ll also have to look into suppliers for the big items that we will need for this reno, like window and door manufacturers and a steel fabricator.

I’ll be sharing more of our plans and our architect’s drawings soon, so do subscribe via the box below to follow the journey!