House Renovation ideas for the kitchen

The kitchen is the heart of our home, not least because I am lucky to have an Aga, so it is the warmest place in the house for most of the day. It’s a lovely large room which houses a good sized dining table, two walls of units and one brick-built recess on the third wall for the Aga. The fourth wall was a bit of a conundrum- it had an empty narrow alcove, the door to our hallway corridor and a sliding door to the small Utility Room. I needed a few house renovation ideas for the kitchen.

It was a challenge to work out how to make the most of it. First stop was to fill the alcove with shelves, to allow me to store my kitchen appliances like Magimix, Kenwood Chef and so on. The carpenter also built the dog crate into the alcove- an idea I got from Pinterest- allowing her to be tucked away when she’s had too much, or at night, but without needing to have a large ugly dog crate out on display.

I wanted to have a large magnetic wall on the clear space between the alcove and Utility Room. I had an idea that I could amass Stickygram pictures over time until I had an entire wall of them as tribute to our family life. But the magnetic paint has been a let down frankly- painted on like treacle, the paint that went over the top of it- and the instructions on the tin were carefully followed- split badly.

 

Even when finished, the wall cannot hold any magnet stronger than a Stickygram- they just slide down the wall-  so my plan to use magnets to fix the children’s art to walls is also an idea that has gone by the wayside. Instead I have resorted to faithful reliable Blu-Tack, which holds up the art that covers over the unimpressive finish on the paintwork as a result of the magnetic undercoat.

Rather than sand the wall down, or skim and start again, I have elected to leave it for now- The Girls’ art work will fill the wall and cover the troubled paintwork- for a few years: that wall can wait until we need a full kitchen remodel, when it may get torn down anyway, and when I no longer need an art station in my kitchen.

The Kids’ table in the kitchen came from the old family room: it’s a mismatch of second-hand coffee table, a single stool left over from the original “art table” which broke, and a pair of Ikea children’s chairs. They are all covered in stickers and tatty, but they do what is needed. So I added a lick of paint to the chairs, then covered the table top and stool top in an upcycled oilcloth- which no longer fits the newly extended kitchen table. It’s a quick fix so I just used a glue gun, but it gives a wipe-clean surface to the table and it looks very pretty.

I added our upcycled planter-into-pen-pot set, and have threaded up a roll of drawing paper onto the table. It lies on the floor, with the paper coming up and over the top- so that as you pull the paper it does not roll across the floor like the Andrex puppy advert, but into the skirting board. The paper comes up between the table and the wall, under the pen pot, which holds it in place, and can then be pulled across the table as it is used.