I’ve just finished a makeover of our kitchen diner. However, before sharing it with you here on the blog, I want to take you back to when we first bought our house in 2013 and the major works of our open plan kitchen renovation.
Kitchen Before
So, let’s start at the beginning of our renovation journey. Here’s the Estate Agent’s picture of how the kitchen looked before. I apologise in advance for the poor quality of most of the images in this post!
This is the part of the kitchen where our table and chairs are now.
The old kitchen was ripped out and two steel beams were fitted before knocking down the wall through to two separate storage type rooms on the other side. This created a large open plan space.
Major Building Works
The area was literally ripped apart and resembled a building site. The ceiling part of the old kitchen had to be ripped out as the bathroom floor above had previously flooded.
You’re surprised aren’t ya? I told you it was bad!
This is a view after the wall was removed. The ‘old’ storage rooms I mentioned are to the left and the ‘old’ kitchen to the right.
We reconfigured the roof in the galley part of the kitchen to incorporate three skylights and allow more light into the room. The single skim walls in what was the storage rooms were insulated with breeze blocks to bring them in line with building regulations.
We converted the garage into a downstairs toilet and utility room which you can see through the doorway in the pic below.
The window area on the left in the above image is the latest space I’ve given a refresh. You’ll have seen this in my Instagram stories if you’ve been watching.
We had a concrete pad pumped into the room to create cohesive, stable flooring.
The concrete floor was then covered with insulation board.
Underfloor Heating
Next we installed underfloor heating and the electrics were fixed as per the plans for the kitchen design.
Screed was then applied on top of the underfloor heating to conduct and contain the heat.
The electrics for the spotlights were installed before the ceiling was boarded.
Magnet Fitted Kitchen
When the majority of the building works were complete, it was time for the exciting part to begin. Andy fitted our Magnet Fusion kitchen in blue. A specialist company manufactured and installed our quartz worktop.
The appliances were installed not long after this and were a welcome change from the makeshift kitchen we had set up in the utility room!
Quartz Floor Tiles
After months of walking on dusty concrete it was wonderful to have the grey quartz floor tiles laid! We were also having other areas of the house tiled too. My memory of that time was being constantly cold as the tilers were in and out all day and left the doors open.
Open Plan Kitchen Renovation – After
I decorated the room taking inspiration from the bright colours of our table and chairs and our open plan kitchen renovation was complete.
As I mentioned at the beginning of the post, the kitchen has recently undergone a makeover that’s more cohesive with the rest of the house and to my current style and taste.
