Our kitchen teardown

It wasn’t the planning or the purchase of the kitchen that made it hit home for me, it was the teardown. I was giddy as a child on Christmas morning. We’ve lived with this kitchen, cooked up storms in it, seen all its flaws and it was finally time to say good bye to it.

Faux cabinet doors made from plywood lined with wallpaper, a ceiling that screamed 80s, tiles that had been painted and then given up on mid way, a rickety door that was the victim of a break in last year, an oven without a working thermostat. Trust me I could go on.

Despite all this it really did hold a lot of great memories for us as our first kitchen together. In the early days of our relationship, Matt cooked paella here to impress me on our tiny space saver hob. We slaved over ridiculous recipes for 72 hour Pho and Heston’s Ultimate Chilli which had more steps than the eiffel tower. We mastered the art of fine tuning the oven controls to set a temperature somewhere between inferno and chilly and managed to cook amazing roasts and even cakes. Of course it’s also been the home of most of my recipe development for this blog and commissions. In a strange way I’ll miss it. It’s unforgettable for all of its bodge job set up and horrors but also because it saw us through some amazing times.

When the time came to rip it all apart, we geared up with dust masks, our multi tools and crowbars and got to work. My Dad and Matt took to the cabinets like men possessed. It took 3 hours for me to empty the cupboards and store all the items upstairs, it took less than 2 hours to get the whole kitchen out. Even the double layered tiles on the wall came off easily.

The floor was a different story, underneath the awful 70s tiles lay a hidden gem…

The original Victorian tiles were in surprisingly good shape but unfortunately due to an extension, only spanned half of the floor.

Some more surprises came in the form of rotten wood and plaster hidden in the walls and bricks that came out like a giant jenga game.

  Our kitchen was soon nothing but a dusty box with some old rotten windows. It felt awesome!

Here you can see the RSJ for the extension underneath that beautiful cladding… yes, it is nice isn’t it! It turns out there were two layers of cladding around it and above the ceiling level, a whole ceiling rose and set of lights. BODGE JOB.

At this point the only thing left to strip out of the kitchen was the wiring and the window and door. We called in the professionals for that.
 And that was it. The kitchen was off to the tip with Matt and my Dad.

Adios kitchen! We won’t miss you!

Keep your eyes peeled for the next stage of the renovation. If you want to see what we have planned, here’s all the details.