ON THE COVER La dolce vita
A light-filled extension to a pretty Victorian cottage created a social kitchen and outdoor living space
Emma Silver used to joke that her previous kitchen had self-emptying cupboards. ‘It was so small and had so few cabinets that each one was packed with stuff. I’d open a door and everything would fall out,’ she explains. ‘Or else I simply couldn’t bear to unpack everything to reach an item at the back, so I rarely used some of my favourite cookware. After 15 years of making do, the time had come for a change.’
Emma, with her husband Guy and their son Tom, began searching for a new property and put in an offer on a farmhouse nearby. ‘The sale fell through and I think it was fate,’ recalls Emma.
‘We realised we love our house and, with only three of us living here, we didn’t need more bedrooms, just a bigger kitchen. Guy and I sat down and worked out a design for an extension that would combine kitchen, dining and living space, and got an architect to draw up plans. We were so sure about what we wanted, he didn’t change a thing.’
The new design had to fix the problems of the existing layout – not just the tiny kitchen area, but also the fact it didn’t connect with the dining room. ‘An old lady lived here before us and there was virtually no kitchen at all. I installed cheap, country-style cabinets but there was no space for a table. We’d have to carry our plates through the hall and living room, and into the dining room. It was so frustrating,’ Emma recalls.
The extension would take the place of a patio at the rear of the house and, at the same time, link the new kitchen to the dining room, creating a natural flow to the property’s ground floor. ‘The aim was to make the room as spacious as we could, with bi-fold doors onto the garden. We didn’t want to overlook our neighbours, so decided not to have windows on the far wall and instead to install a single long run of units to give us the storage space we’d been missing, with an island in front,’ says Emma. The original kitchen became a cosy seating area, with sofa and TV, within the new living area.
The house is in a Conservation Area, so Emma and Guy made sure the plans were in keeping with the property and specified wooden doors and windows. Even so, obtaining planning permission was tricky. ‘We needed to provide samples of the brick we would be using, even though the exterior of the property is painted,’ says Emma. ‘We live down a single-track road, so had to explain how tradespeople and delivery drivers would access the site, and agree to have them park in our garden, which meant it needed complete restoration afterwards. The extension also meant removing a pond, so the planners wanted to check there wouldn’t be a loss of ecological diversity.’ Finally, permission was granted and, once work began, the extension took just four months to complete.
‘We wanted a classic kitchen that wasn’t going to date and chose a handmade Shaker style from Seattle & Taylor with granite worktops,’ says Emma. ‘The designer helped us organise the layout, suggesting dimensions for the island and recommending everything from a boiling water tap and where to site the sink, to the position of the bar stools. I wanted a range cooker and decided on a mirrored splashback for simplicity. I also chose limestone flags for the floor, as I wanted it to look as if they’d been there forever.’
One surprise in the project is the pizza oven that sits in pride of place on the new patio area.
‘It wasn’t part of the original plan but Guy has family in Italy and we go there every year and love to cook and eat pizzas while on holiday. I guess we wanted to bring those good times back home with us,’ Emma says. The oven weighs half a ton and had to be manoeuvred into place by a digger. ‘It’s wonderful when we have friends over and means the kitchen spans both inside and out. From a poky room in an awkward layout, we’ve created a flowing space that’s transformed how we live. We couldn’t be happier with how it’s turned out.’