Earlier in the year I published a few posts concerning a significant reshuffle of our home layout; ultimately leading to us creating a kitchen/diner at the opposite end of our garden flat (the existing kitchen then being converted to a bedroom/nursery for our new edition ‘Beatrice’). The summer months yielded hardly any progress thanks to unreliable tradesmen. By September, in a fit of frustration we changed contractors and have watched things progress at rapid speed since then.
The flat sits within a large 1860s property, but with the new project we have completely disregarded all rules of period correctness and have heavily indulged our interwar design fantasies.
The room is a very generous space, but is not without its problems. The walls were a mixture of bare brick and crumbling plaster, with numerous steel pipe brackets seemly growing like grass out of the walls. The original Victorian terracotta tile floor (which runs throughout most of the flat) was very dirty and poorly repaired with concrete in places. The high ceilings gave little heat or acoustic insulation from the heavy footed residents upstairs, and there was little to no natural light.
To counteract these we fitted a false ceiling crammed with rockwool, batton and boarded all the walls, knocked out a bricked up window and fitted a double glazed sash, and gave the floor some much needed TLC repairing the damaged sections with coloured cement and buffing the whole thing. All wiring and pipework has neatly been hidden behind the new walls and ceiling.
After much searching and deliberation I had to abandon my hunt for lights that mimic those in the Cafe Zedel (see my previous blog) and do the obvious thing, ship a bunch of matching reproduction light fittings from Australia! I would have loved to use original period fittings, but finding items that matched in our chosen chrome scheme was near impossible. So in one of 
the most extravagant & indulgent purchases I’ve ever made I found myself placing an order for some beautiful wares at Restoration Online. A three branch chandelier, large pendant and two wall lights from the Astoria range found themselves heading in my direction, arriving with a nasty customs bill to keep them company. They’ll be mounted on ‘Miami’ roses from Classic Ceiling and should look fantastic.
The kitchen units are on order from
DIYkitchens and should arrive early in the new year. We’ve gone for a fairly predictable (but thoroughly appropriate) curved white high gloss ‘Livorna’ range with rusty black quartz worktop and bow handles.
Between now and then I’ve got to paint the room. After dismissing large 
blocks of green in our original plan as being too imposing we’ve opted for a more radical scheme. Thick bands of white, grey and ‘twisted turquoise’ with a 30mm black line will run from the worktop around the whole space. The turquoise will stay 300mm from the black line, but climb up and over doorways and other features. It’ll test my frogtape abilities to the max, but should hopefully be worth the trouble and strife in the long run.
