Our constantly evolving kitchen, a tour.

The story so far: Over the last eight years our kitchen has constantly evolved. It probably always will do? I believe change is good for the soul, it prevents you taking things for granted, even the mundane.

Black and white red and blue with a hint of yellow…

I would describe the style of our kitchen as ‘Industrial Boudoir’ (yeah I just invented that? ) I enjoy mixing it up, kitchens can often be cold and clinical, as can bathrooms. So I have stirred in a little bit of pattern and added an ‘Industrial edge’ and of course as usual in our house, there are lots of handmade and vintage finds too.

Where to start? Perhaps that day approximately 4 years ago when I decided I despised our overhead cupboards so much, that I would rather have bare walls than look at them for one minute longer! So I unscrewed them all and took them off the walls (by myself, it wasn’t easy ) then dumped them on the driveway. It felt sooo good. Marc still laughs about the day he came home to find half the kitchen on the drive.

However I completely forgot about the fact that at that time we had no budget to spare for new anything, let alone new kitchen shelves. So we decided to tile the bare walls with the cheapest tiles we could find (good old white subway classics to the rescue) we used our Tesco vouchers to pay for those! We then reused some old ikea shelves from other rooms, cut them to fit and popped them up. Perfect to display the vintage Pyrex, it looks superb on display and lit up at night.

We were given some black off-cut worktops. Nothing fancy but they went with the tiles! Ebay provided a cheap extractor hood in stainless steel. IKEA had a sale so we bought glossy white fronts for the remaining units. Marc then painted everything else white. 3 blue glass lamps were found for £2.00 each in the B & Q sale. So far so good. I then rescued a gorgeous vintage old school chair from a skip (with permission) and Marc restored it to its former beauty.

That lasted two years. Total cost less than £700 for an almost complete make-over!

I was later gifted some Mini Moderns wallpaper by Wallpaper direct. I chose the Darjeeling design in the Lido colourway. Very retro, very busy, it was love at first sight for me. Marc bravely papered over the remaining 2 white walls and we all loved the result. It contrasted nicely with the two white tiled walls and brought everything to life.

Then came the central kitchen, extra work-space table. Marc made it from pipes and our old garden table!

The chairs hanging on the wall we already had. They are from Habitat and luckily they perfectly matched the wallpaper.

New lights:
This year we acquired new ‘jam jar lights’ from Iconic lights. Marc rewired them with vintage style blue flex and we added new led lights. More details in this post here

Also this year Marc came up with the idea of fixing a sheet of metal up on the side of a cupboard that we could use as a magnetic noticeboard. Its huge and covers up the nasty side of a unit left over from before.

What next?
Future plans are being hatched, the old ikea white shelves will be replaced very soon, and the tiles are having a bit of a make-over, like I said ‘ever evolving’…oh and plants there will be much greenery.

So all in all this room has changed dramatically over the years and cost very little money. Of course if we were spending money I would have chosen differently, but it would still look very similar, just maybe better quality materials. Necessity really is the mother of invention you know?

So from this to this …. what do you think of it so far?