a new living space

 

I was hoping to do a proper photo shoot of our new living space but every time the light was good enough, the mess was too much to share... I was kidding myself of course when I imagined this photo shoot, perfect minimalistic styling and all. The conditions are never perfect expect maybe if everybody moved out for a week. Not all photos were taken on the same day. 

As I am typing this, I am sitting at the kitchen table looking into the garden. It is a bit bare with only a few splashes of colour (a water gun, two B&Q buckets and a football) but the sun is shining and I can see the blue sky through the roof windows.

The new living space is fabulous, we all love it, even Sam who was less than complimentary about the whole project seems to enjoy the space. So much so that we've had a group of teenagers joining us for dinner not once but twice since New Year. There were seven teenagers all in all yesterday (including ours). It is good that our kitchen table extends!

I love the big light space. The room is divided by a supporting pillar. I would have rather liked room without supporting structural elements but this would have involved a steel frame and a crane rather than manually fitted steel beams. Probably not impossible to fit but way out of our budget given the difficult access to the property. The structural element turns out to be quite useful actually. We use the wall space it creates, one side has a large notice board, the other side bookshelves from top to bottom. The two remaining sides have art displayed. It also hides all our waste water pipes from the top floor bathrooms.

We had long discussions about the kitchen layout. My favourite option was an L-shaped layout along the two longest walls. Richard didn't fancy this much, arguing that then you'd always be facing a wall when working in the kitchen. I really like the alternative, an island. It is a sociable solution, we can sit at the island or at the table and chat to the chef. It is a bit annoying when you like to retreat to the kitchen for a bit of peaceful pottering.

I love our small sitting area with two of my favourite armchairs. You can see my toes in one of the photos, I am sitting in the grey chair looking towards the dining room table. The full height window makes it a really nice corner to sit in.

My favourite item must be the lampshade. It is a bit crazy but I don't care. It turns out to be a focus of conversation whenever someone comes for a cuppa.

It has become more important to tidy regularly because we can't just close the door to the kitchen and ignore the mess. There is no kitchen door. We wanted to keep the original doors for sewing room and utility rooms and were one door short... maybe one will show up in a skip some day.

I am saving the sewing room for another day, I am still organising it. It hides behind the door above. I am not going to bother showing you utility room, which is at the heart of the house and extremely useful but not visually pleasing.

Several months of mess and temporary or no kitchen are long forgotten.

Anyway, got to go and cook some dinner. I am back at work but worked at home today, which made for gentle start. I managed a long walk with Sam, which was lovely. Schools are back tomorrow and Richard took all the other kids to the Irn Bru Carneval. All was peaceful.  Thanks for stopping by. xx