rose hip : in the thick of it...

...as you will see in this post, our kitchen renovation is in full swing and I thought I would show you a few "before and after" shots... Right before starting the demolition of our old and very icky kitchen (which ended up being a family affair taking up two full days), I took a few photos. Above and below are two views of the kitchen towards the french doors and the backyard, taken from where you enter the kitchen from the living room which is at the front of the house; the above photo is the view as you look towards the left and the below one, towards the right...

Now, if you walk to the french doors and turn around looking towards the living room and the front of the house, the view to the right which you can see below is of our fridge, a window over our sink and our "beautiful" cabinetry; as you can see, we are missing a bottom cabinet door which sheared off in the last while and which we never replaced, knowing that we would be redoing our kitchen soon. If you also look closely at the bottom drawer near the fridge, you may see that the far side of the drawer panel has also broken off, making the whole look rather shabby without any of the chic!

Looking more to the left, you can see our range which has been the only nice thing in our kitchen for the last three years or so; we bought it when our previous oven broke down, anticipating that a new kitchen would soon follow to keep it company... Well, it took us a bit longer to get a move on our new kitchen then we thought it would when made this purchase, mostly due to a lot of procrastination and just general humming and hawing...

As you can probably see, the tiles behind the range and over the counter are quite old and have partially fallen off; again, we never bothered to replace them given that we knew that a new kitchen was around the corner. I think that the photo below shows our kitchen at its worst, not only in terms of esthetics, but also as far as its functionality goes, since the little bit of counter you can see has been the extent of our kitchen work surface since we've lived in this house!...

Now if you walk by the range through the entrance into the living room and then, once in the living room, turn towards the kitchen, our fireplace and a built-in little cabinet with leaded window doors comes into full view on the left as you can see below. The fireplace facade is actually made up of red bricks with black speckling which really bothered me when we first moved in, so I painted the whole thing white.

As part of our new kitchen design, we decided that we wanted to completely expose our chimney in order to add some nice patina and character to our new kitchen; our range will stay in the same spot as in the old kitchen but with an old chimney as a backdrop. The idea to remove all the walls around our chimney column also arose from a wish to have more of an open concept plan on our first floor encompassing both the living room and kitchen. Our house dates from the late 1920s and has a typical first floor cottage design of that era common in our area which is rather simple and uninspired: the division of the space into 4 quadrants with a bathroom and stairwell nestled in between these quadrants, leading to the rather poky closed-in feel of the communal spaces of both the kitchen and the living room . After building our house at the lake according to a more contemporary design with an open plan concept for the communal areas of the kitchen, living room and dining area, we realized how much more inviting such a design can be, thus leading us to this decision of opening up some of the first floor layout in this house.

However, we were a bit surprised to find out that our chimney was not built as a column with straight sides... Initially, I thought I wanted to keep it as is because I liked the idea that it would be authentic to the original house; however, while I like how it looks from the kitchen side, I think that it would probably be better to have a straight-sided column from the living room side as the fireplace would look more centered in this way. So, we are now in search of old chimney bricks to build up the chimney side that isn't straight...

As you can clearly see, our kitchen has dramatically changed in appearance; in order to re-wire it, re-plumb it, insulate it, and then drywall it all, we've had to remove everything down to the wall studs and joists in the ceiling. The view above is towards the french doors and below, towards our sink under the window which will remain in the same spot in our new kitchen design...

Below, the view is towards the living room where we no longer have all the cabinets and counter to the right of the range, but a new opening to our living room. Even in this mess, I'm already seeing how the character and livability of this space once fully renovated will be greatly improved. So, as you can well see, we are definitely in the thick of it and will be so for at least the next month... I hope you've enjoyed this post because I plan on posting more about this renovation of ours as we make progress through the next little while. In the midst of all this, I also hope to post about the things I've promised to post about, namely, pillowcases and patchworks... Thanks for popping by for a visit to our construction site!...

Comments

All of the photos and your descriptions have given a really good picture of how it's all laid out. It will be interesting to follow your progress.

Posted by: Holly McLean | June 01, 2016 at 02:42 AM

I like the exposed, off-center chimney! I think that as a design feature it adds character and interest...and could offer a nice peek-around to someone standing at the stove.

I can't wait to see more in-progress pics!!!

Posted by: Heather | June 01, 2016 at 09:36 AM