To know me is to know my kitchen. For the past three years, ever since my husband and I decided to renovate, it has consumed about 90% of my brain. By autumn 2020, we had lived with our two daughters for 12 years with a small, shabby Ikea kitchen, installed long before we’d bought our London terrace home. The standard solution to the storage, countertop and dine-in deficits of Victorian living seemed to be the ubiquitous side-return extension. We thought this could be easily accomplished, even if our real goal was to crank up the style factor a few notches.
I had long fantasised about integrated appliances, miles of island and a “gadget garage”; and about revamping our poky concrete garden so the indoors flowed out seamlessly through glass. We spotted a vaulted glass extension through the window of a nearby home and interviewed the architects, a young practice I had read about in design blogs. We signed off on a glassy addition and waited as planners rejected every iteration.
