I can honestly say that my ‘new’ kitchen looks and feels like a totally new space compared to before. We didn’t have the budget to make drastic changes and we had to do everything ourselves but a few subtle changes have made a big difference.

Our kitchen cupboards were fine so we kept a lot of them but just by removing a few of the wall cupboards made the space feel instantly bigger and quite a few friends have asked whether we moved a wall to make the room larger so that’s a good sign of success. By painting the walls Pink Ground, adding leather door handles, metro tiles, a solid beech worktop, a quartz sink and a couple of open shelves I feel much more at home in this kitchen and it works a lot better on a practical level, too.

Here’s a bit more detail of the changes we made…

I removed the stainless steel splash back from behind the hob and replaced it with matt white metro tiles from Tile Giant. I added leather handles to the bottom cupboards and ceramic white knobs to the top cupboards (I didn’t want the leather handles to be overpowering). The worktop on this side of the kitchen was also replaced with solid beech.

The right side of the kitchen above has remained the same in structure but the new solid wood worktop and metro tiles have lightened and brightened this side of the kitchen.

In an ideal world I would have removed all the wall cupboards on the left side of the kitchen but the boiler is in that end cupboard so it had to stay.

The left hand side of the kitchen is now a lot more open. The Pink Ground wall paint has added warmth and the white painted floor makes it look a lot more contemporary and bright (it used to be dark faux wood vinyl).

The open shelves are my favourite addition to the kitchen. The space feels a lot more open without the wall cupboards and to help retain that feeling of space and light everything on the shelves is white, which creates a nice unified look. Plants dotted around the shelves help to adda bit of contrast and interest.

I love being able to display all my white crockery and my cotton white Le Creuset pans.

Jules came up with the clever idea of mounting the shelf brackets upside down, creating a notch in the back of the shelf so that they sit flush to the wall. This way the vertical strut can’t really be seen as I painted them the same colour as the wall and the objects on the shelves cover them. We bought lengths of pine (8.5 inch wide, 1 inch thick) from the timber yard for the shelves that I painted white and we spaced the brackets 50cm apart . So far they are holding up brilliantly.

The new sink ties together the white cupboards, tiles and shelves and the wall colour, work top and leather handles tone in well with each other too.

I am so please that I suddenly woke up one morning and decided we needed to have a white sink as it looks so much better than the stainless steel one we had. It is also so much easier to keep clean although this model doesn’t have a draining board, which wouldn’t suit everyone. As it is just the two of us and we have a dish washer we tend not to do much washing up so I decided to save the space on an inbuilt draining board. I have a small cutlery drainer that sits in the corner of the sink and if we do wash up something large I just pop a tea towel down on the worktop and place it on that or dry it up immediately. I like the combination of the white sink and white metro tiles.

I did a massive decluttering spree before we did the kitchen and got rid of loads of unnecessary kitchen stuff. I chose the crockery and cutlery that we use on a daily basis to place on the first shelf and then glassware and a few bits of pottery that we use less often on the top shelf. Everything is within arm’s reach so no step stool is needed. We hung mugs below the bottom shelf to save space and for ease of access.

There used to be a full height cupboard at the entrance to the kitchen but removing that made the biggest difference to the feel of the kitchen. Without that cupboard we could lengthen the worktop and place the dishwasher underneath it and there was enough space for Jules to build a bottle holder in the gap that was left.

As you entered the kitchen from this side you were faced with a full height cupboard and a horrible metal wine rack. Both of those things have gone so the room feels bigger and wider.

At the other end of the kitchen there used to be a radiator, which prevented us from making the most of this passageway from the hallway that leads into he living room. We decided to remove the radiator altogether (we live in a very well insulated new build so we definitely won’t miss it) and that way we could mount these BESTA cupboards from Ikea. This has worked amazingly well – and everyone has commented on it – as it extends the living space and helps to connect the living room with the kitchen. It makes the absolute most of the space but doesn’t make it feel smaller because they are so sleek and float above the floor.

Removing the radiator and adding these cabinets at the end of the kitchen has worked brilliantly.

The new cabinets lead into the living room (you can just see the corner of it on the right). To see my living room makeover take a look over here.

It was worth the hard slog in the end and we are both enjoying the kitchen so much more than I thought possible. I hope Ive proved with a small budget and a bit of hard work you can make a big difference to a room.

Katy x

*All photography by Katharine Peachey.

Sources:

Paint – Pink Ground c/o Farrow & Ball

Tiles – matt metro tiles c/o Tile Giant

Worktop – solid beech worktop custom made from Ikea

Sink – quartz sink from Ikea

Door handles – leather handles made by me on the bottom cupboards and ceramic handles from John Lewis on the wall cupboards

Sideboard – BESTA cabinets from Ikea

My kitchen has always been the room in my flat that I like least: boring, generic and lacking any character. When I decided to tackle the kitchen I knew it wasn’t going to be as simple as a lick of paint and a few nice new accessories so I had to spend a while persuading Jules to help me for this project. I also had to spend a while saving up for the work as it wasn’t going to be cheap.

Before

What I didn’t like:

– I HATED the cheap laminate work tops as they were dark and a bit too ‘shiny’. None of my nice kitchen stuff looked nice on this surface! It absorbed all of the light and energy in this space.

– The door handles have always offended me a disproportionate amount; I don’t like how big they are.

– There is no big expanse of work surface

– The stainless steel sink is a nightmare to keep looking clean and it looks dull.

– Even though it is a large galley kitchen the wall cupboards and the full height cupboards at the entrance to the kitchen encroach on the space a lot.

– The kitchen felt very generic and lacked any character or felt like ‘me’.

Here’s a hotch potch selection of ‘before’ pics – I NEVER remember to take proper before pics!

Lots of cupboards made the space feel small.

At the entrance to the kitchen was this HORRIBLE wine rack (Jules loved it because it was so practical) and this HORRIBLE open full height cupboard that always looked a bit of a mess and disjointed.

During the project

I have to say that Jules did the majority of the hard graft for this DIY project. We spent all four weekends of January getting it done and it was a complete mess. We couldn’t afford to take time off during the week to do it so it dragged on and on and one weekend we didn’t finish installing the new sink so we spent that week washing up in the bath – oh the fun! I’m not going to lie, it was a slog.

We made the massive mistake of getting over excited when we first started and didn’t pack up everything from the kitchen, which added so much chaos to the mix…

What were we thinking?!

We started by replacing the work tops for real wood and Jules had to cut them to size and cut out the holes for the hob and sink using a jigsaw – I think I’m still finding saw dust in cracks around the house and Jules’s laptop packed up as it was so full of it! It was a really difficult job because the new worktops weighed a tonne and the one for the left side of the kitchen measures over 3m so manoeuvring it in our small flat was like a Crystal Maze challenge.

I also decided to remove the stainless steel panel behind the hob because I hate how difficult it is to polish and it feels quite heavy. In the future we will change the hob to a gas one but we didn’t have the budget for that this time round.

On the other side of the kitchen we had much more to do as I decided pretty early on that I wanted to remove the full height cupboard and the wall cupboards to be replaced by open shelving.

As soon as the full height cupboard came down the kitchen instantly looked twice as big!

Without that cupboard we could have a much longer work surface, which makes such a big difference.

Without the full height cupboard the dishwasher could sit underneath the work top and there was a gap so Jules made a wine rack to fit the space perfectly, which also meant we could get rid of the horrible metal wine rack.

We installed and plumbed in a new sink.

And then I painted. I chose Farrow & Ball’s Pink Ground (it took a bit of convincing – Jules was not a fan of having a pink kitchen) but he now really likes it because it is such a brilliant neutral and adds a soft warm glow to the kitchen. Definitely no sugary candy pink present here!

One of the last jobs was tiling both sides of the kitchen and I chose these white metro tiles from Tile Giant, which add a fresh contemporary feel to the space.

I changed the door handles – did you see the DIY leather handles I made? – and then we put up the open shelves on the left hand side of the kitchen. You will have to pop back next to see the full reveal!

Katy x

Enough of the teasing – my living room is finally ready to share with you, beautifully photographed by Katharine Peachey. It took a lot longer than expected as the sofa was very delayed so I couldn’t pull the room together without that but I hope you’ll agree that it was was worth it in the end (we definitely think so and it has made not only this room but the whole flat feel completely different). If you didn’t catch my ‘before’ post last week head over to read it here and see what the room looked like before I redecorated and a bit of the decorating process.

I wanted this space to feel lighter, fresher, simpler and more cohesive, as well as working better on a more practical level (it had to be dog friendly and allow Jules and I to use the room in the evenings and for eating without being squished on a sofa that was too small or perched at a table shoved against the wall). I also wanted this room to tie in more with the style of our home office and bedroom to make the whole flat flow better. As i explained in last week’s ‘before’ post, the first thing I did was to paint the room in one of Farrow & Ball’s new colours. I chose Peignoir, which is pink with a big dose of grey and it changes colour from the softest of blush pinks, to dark grey to mauve depending on the light and weather. It is a wonderfully calm feeling colour and I decided to base the colour scheme around its two components of grey and pink.

So, here’s how the room looks now…

I simply turned the dining table around and installed a hanging pendant over it and both of these changes have made it feel 100% more inviting and conducive to sitting and chatting after dinner.

The two wishbone chairs in front of the window are perfect as they don’t block any light and are super comfy if we have a few people over or they can double up as extra dining chairs. I made a pink linen cushion for one of the chairs and have a gorgeous grey cashmere blanket on the other so that there are dots of soft pink and grey on all sides of the room.

I kept this white cupboard, which used to be on the other side of the room, as it is great for storage and isn’t too big or heavy, which was the problem with the G-plan sideboard that used to be in this position.

The new sofa is a revelation as we can all be comfortable sitting/lying down together (I get the chaise bit, natch!). The grey wool is perfect as it repels dirt when Otto brushes up against it after a muddy walk and it really brings out the grey in the Peignoir wall colour. I love the mid-century style feet and the fact it sits off the ground helps to keep the light flowing around the room. It is long enough to stretch the length of the wall now so makes better use of the space. The jute rug is ideal for Otto as it shows no dirt or hair and does not move an inch even without underlay, which is really important as he is constantly rolling around on the floor.

This Anglepoise wall mounted lamp is completely perfect for this space as there wasn’t room for a floor lamp. We can easily move it around to make it a reading lamp or an uplighter for soft even light. I really love it.

The new Ercol coffee table is one of my favourite additions to this room. As well as being a very practical size, shape and design, it is beautifully made and works perfectly with the colour tones in this room.

I bought the Eucalyptus tree because I love the silvery colour of the leaves, which complements the greys and pinks.

The touches of black around the room from the lamp, mirror and this beautiful print from The Future Kept help to ground the scheme and add some contrast.

I repainted the floor with Farrow & Ball’s All White floor paint, which helps to keep the Peignoir feeling fresh and modern, whilst the jute rug adds some warmth.

I really hope you like what I’ve done to the room; the changes have made the room work so much better than it used to, which is the main thing. Everybody who has visited have said that they love how calm the room feels now and I really feel that on a daily basis.

I will show you the kitchen later this week!

Katy x

Source list

Peignoir wall paint – c/o Farrow & Ball

Ercol coffee table (with clear lacquer) – c/o Houseology

Tivoli sofa (in light grey wool) – Swoon Editions with press dicount

Spring Goddess print – The Future Kept

Anglepoise wall mounted lamp (deep slate) – c/o Houseology

Grey cable blanket – c/o Dot and Tom

Linen cushions and Muuto cushion in rose on sofa – c/o Houseology

Wishbone chairs – Swivel

Jute rug – B&Q

Original BTC ceramic hanging pendant – The White Company

Eucalyptus tree – The Fresh Flower Company

Vintage wall mirror – eBay