Kitchen Renos #6 - So why am I doing all this?

 Frustration and maintenance have been the main drivers for the chaos that I am living through at the moment. Years ago I thought a bay window in the kitchen would be lovely as it would give me space on the windowsill to put some plants. What I had was so narrow that pots were always too wide to balance properly and regularly fell off or were so small they did not hold enough soil for the plants to grow successfully.

However, I then realised that if I changed the window other issues would need to be addressed when work was being done:

1. The plastered walls (green in the photo above) were cracking badly and pieces falling off so could not be repainted until they were re-rendered.
2. The tiles were badly crazed with nearly 80 years of ingrained dirt and kitchen oil and would need to be replaced.
3. A few years ago when one of my taps had died and I was having plumbing done the plumber at the time changed my two taps for a mixer tap. This has been a most unsuccessful experiment so I always said when I needed a plumber again I would go back to two taps with a common spout as before.
4. The benchtops needed resurfacing but in one area near the sink a crack had developed and water was leaking into the cupboards underneath. We'd filled the cracks many times but nothing seemed to be successful.
5. The timber on the drawer fronts was falling off and would need to be fixed.
6. The internal woodwork in the cupboards was old 1972 pine board and had not fared well with leaks and age so was flaking badly.
7. There were deep grooves in one are of the cork flooring where the old dishwasher used to be wheeled out to create bench space. These tiles would need replacing and I had been told that new ones would not match the other tiles.
8. The old stove (1946 vintage) needed replacing a few years ago because it had developed severe gas leaks that could no longer be fixed. I would be able to use the new stove. This would govern the colour scheme in any new work around it and I had chosen it because it was the only one I could get to "match" my old kitchen.
9. Behind the fridge and dresser the tiles were cut in to fit around the original 1946 overhead cupboards that we had removed when my Dad revamped the kitchen in 1972. This meant these had to be covered with furniture to hide them.
10. In the pantry the shelving units we put up in 1972 were old pine board ready-made book cases and were beginning to flake apart quite badly so needed to be replaced.
11. The pantry wall plaster was falling off and would need re-rendering before painting.
12. If the pantry wall needed to be gutted then it would make sense to remove the redundant door to the original back verandah and fill the gap before rendering.

Once all that was added up and I found a building and renovation firm that had worked for and was recommended by Geoff and Jen (Konnect Building Solutions). After a lot of talking to Nathan (the boss) and friends and family I then realised that this would all be such a big job that I should go the whole hog and revamp the whole area. 

So I did a bit of blue sky thinking and came up with the removal of most of the internal kitchen wall to the stair room and the supporting column that used to be between the original back door and the window next to it. This would open up the whole area to lots of possibilities as a family room and entertainment area. The new plans would work better if I had the original floors sanded and could remove the carpet in the stair room so it all looked continuous.

The big joke is that I am now not getting the bay window that started this whole process and have had the original window fixed so it works properly. The new cupboards will be the height of the window sill and continuous with it and they will be a little deeper. Problem of the pot plants solved!