Everything but the kitchen sink (no actually that's second-hand too!)

A look back at our 2021 kitchen reno featuring lots of second-hand and salvaged materials

Speaking as someone who does not have children and has not experienced labour, I imagine house renovations to be a little like the experience of childbirth. It’s painful, it’s unpredictable, it’s chaotic and you’re having to make a lot of crucial decisions on the fly. But once you’re on the other side, you look back and for the most part, you only remember the positives and the way in which it’s transformed your life for the better. Hence, why you’re able to face the prospect of doing it a second or third time.

Well, we find ourselves back in our house, and once again in reno land having spent the past week ripping out the old bathroom. It’s been four years since we did our initial renovations, and just over two years since we finished phase two - a v. small extension to the rear of the house - and genuinely I forget just how overwhelming and anxiety inducing renovating can be. And how dusty! Taking on any of the renovation work yourself is not something I would recommend unless like me, you have a partner who lives for the DIY and is thankfully a natural project manager. I am obviously happy to get stuck in but very much sous cheffing my way through with the very little upper body strength and hand eye coordination I possess - I lost count of the number of times I hit my thumb with a hammer on Saturday chiselling off tiles.

So whilst we’re amidst the dust and the chaos, I wanted to celebrate our past achievements with a look back at our 2021 kitchen reno, for which we sourced a lot second-hand or salvaged including the island counter, floor tiles, sink, fridge, lights, extractor fan and worktops. This is a thorough deep dive so expect details, but hopefully useful ones. About half of this newsletter is accessible to free subscribers, but you’ll need to be a paid subscriber to access the full thing.

When we first got the house, what is now the kitchen was a dingy dining room, whilst the old kitchen was a tiny space tagged on the back. We decided to knock the wall down between the dining room and the front room to create an open living-kitchen space, (the day after getting the keys might I add), and to then have an eating/dining space in what was the old galley kitchen (phase two).

My favourite thing about the kitchen is that we managed to restore the original old checkerboard quarry tile floor which we uncovered under lino. The tiles are troublesome in more ways than I care to count, incredibly uneven and freezing cold in the winter but despite all that we love love love them. They add so much character, are such a distinctive feature in the space and a big part of the history of the house.

The quarry tiles in various stages of repair

It took seconds to pull up the old lino but five of us almost an entire weekend to chisel off the old adhesive by hand. Even then, some areas of the tiles were beyond repair so we hunted down matching replacements from local reclamation yards - yes, it was as painstaking as it sounds. I think everyone thought we were mad but we were really determined to save them. Even after the first tiler that came to repair them did a total botch-job, we persisted. Thankfully our builder came to the rescue and re-did the repair for us, so meticulously that you can’t even see where the original floor stops and the replacements start.

In retrospect, our advice to anyone who just so happens to be in the same boat with original tiled floors - do yourselves a favour and take the tiles up, create a level solid base and re-lay them with modern adhesive and grout. Something we didn’t do. Our tiles effectively just sit on a base of compacted sand, which means over time they move, can loosen and any attempts at grouting will eventually fail. They also made fitting the kitchen and skirting boards a total nightmare.

Ok so turns out some of the tiles weren’t the best colour match…

In terms of the overall cost of the kitchen, we budgeted £6,000 and came in just above