This charming stone cottage just around the corner from Frensham Pond required a completely new kitchen space. The original kitchen had 3 big factors that impacted on the usual kitchen space – 1) a huge brick-built chimney stack, which although had a small cupboard it meant the range cooker was off-centre with no actual storage around it 2) built-in pantry area, which is nice to have the pantry storage but took up so much usuable kitchen space and 3) a restrictive staircase . These 3 sections combined ate up so much premium kitchen space so we went completely back to the drawing board and re-designed the kitchen from scratch with no obstacles.
The first task was to create a focal point of the existing Smeg range cooker, so with the chimney stack gone it meant we were able to position the range centrally with a new bespoke mantle above to hide the new canopy extractor hood, plus ample storage either side at low and high levels.
With the stack gone it meant the originally disjointed cabinetry could now flow around the corner creating a huge L-shape storage run full of deep cupboards, pan drawers, hidden internal cutlery drawers, and integrated/hidden pull-out bin.
We purposely chose not to fill this wall with wall cabinets to not obstruct the view as you enter the room.
The next challenge was to create enough storage to house everything that previously sat in the original separate pantry. The fridge was also previously postioned well away from the kitchen so this naturally needed to be moved into the new kitchen area. We went with an Oak lined pull-out larder for the usual dry goods, with a bespoke feature larder next equipped with internal drawers and door mounted spice rack, then the newly relocated tall fridge on the end – all 3 finished with stunning panelled full height larder doors.
Next up there was originally a doorway (through to where the fridge used to be) which was subsequently blocked off so create an alcove niche for a nice little breakfast station.
We kept with the original peninsula island design but doubled the storage with back to back cupboards (originally wasted space with no functional storage). We also increased the width of the old 45cm dishwasher to a full 60cm, next to the new ceramic butler sink, with Quooker Classic Fusion boiling tap.
In terms of the cabinetry, we combined 2 well known kitchen brands to ensure the colours were 100% to the clients requirement. All base units are the ever popular Aldana skinny shaker range painted in Graphite, and all tall and wall units are the new Crathorne skinny shaker painted in Porcelain.
