Tuesday 21 May 2013

Meanwhile....back in South-East London....

In the run up to moving to our little house we have been renovating our 1940/50s London ex council flat in order to rent it out. This has so far involved some minor redecoration, the installation of more storage heaters, lots of new electrics and preparations for a new kitchen. Sensibly or insensibly we are having a bespoke kitchen made by our very talented next door neighbours at Karl Marrow Furtniture.

Even though we are aware that this is a risky and probably more costly way of providing a kitchen for tenants (since we will only benefit from it for a few months and we won't be moving back in) ; the last kitchen was put in back in the 80's and so we felt that a quality remodel and redesign was well overdue, meaning that the kitchen we get will make the most of the space (the current one really does not), reflect and flatter the flats 50s design and it will last for another few decades - in other words we have waited so long to do this and we don't plan on doing this again any time soon!

The kitchen design itself is pretty quirky as it involves a secret utility cupboard which will be hidden by a sliding shelving unit. To explain this particular element properly it is going to take diagrams, photos and models, none of which i currently have so I think it would be best to leave this till my next post where i can do it justice.

For now, my main concern is all the dust that is generated. Never underestimate how much dust gets over everything and how much you will need to clean clean and clean again while you are living in a mid-renovated property.

The other area of the flat that requires attention is the garden. Once a beautiful rose garden with an apple tree centre and box hedging, lovingly tended by my husbands grandfather, fell into a brambled abyss through years of little or no attention. The garden has changed a lot over the years that we have lived there together, we have cleared it bit by bit and now have a lovely curved decking in one corner that sits under bi-fold doors that we installed two years ago (pic below) and a cute little [office] bunker at the bottom corner (called the bunker as its is half dug into the ground - very cool, but currently full of water - fail) with a little green roof (also in the picture), however we haven't really done much to it other then continually clearing it and peering over the fence enviously at our other neighbours glorious garden evolution. So this summer we will finish it and it is going to be a lot of elbow grease! Watch this space!

Here is the decking through the bi-folds with the bunker at the end

Newly stained decking


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