Week 6 and we have entered a final place in one of the rooms in the house- the kitchen is done. Well I say done , is a room ever done? Its also a temporary kitchen as the big move and big extension this kitchen will move - agin not the exact kitchen i have planned my dream one, so the faux elements area budget necessity and I’m pretty chuffed how they turned out.

Lets check out some before and afters shall we this is how we looked before, the old tired outdated farmhousey style going on

Tight budget makes you think and work better

So we had to do manage the budget tightly as the real spend is going on the extensions and the real kitchen I want.

The cupboards stayed as is , layout and format. Did ponder about removing the wall cabinets and adding open shelves, too much money at the moment. So we painted the whole kicthen in a farrow & Ball colour Dimity and replaced the handles with good old Ikea leather ones (the larder ones are much better from Dowsling & Reynolds).

New handles do transform a cupboard

We also covered up the wine rack and the cupboard at the back of the island, as they looked out of style, just good old ply and even better from the garage so no cost! The focus was to be bright and light as its a naturally dark room. We also added a larder (which is huge) under the stairs space which was used or for sale anyway as a dining area- you couldn’t sit there due to the sloping roof. Its awesome and worth every penny- it will create much needed storage as this room will eventually be a craft room and extended hallway so the storage will be useful. The only thing missing is the new windows- the kitchen had NO opening or ventilation, no extraction fan presuming previous owner didn’t want to lean to open - the windows are set in a 3ft deep cavity - we have traditional sash in keeping with the age of the house- windows coming that will be black on the exterior and white inside.

We added pendants lights for the island, originally had black ones from Ikea then changed them from these bargains from HomeSense I think it adds a better quality.

The island and worktops I didn’t replace and faux marbled them using chalk paint, and sealing them with many many many coats of wax paint by Annie Sloan

Final was adding seating and we had some silver bar stools from the bar upstairs I painted them , sprayed the legs black and hey presto new seating, we also found some vintage seating from the local thrift shop, added some sheepskin seat pads and hey presto.