Our kitchen (from our newish and still evolving home) made an small appearance recently in the Spring Issue of Renew Magazine (issue 133)

Kitchen for a new home created by evolving a new design out of kitchens retired from other homes.

The kitchen design was a challenge for this project as it was pieced together from the parts of other kitchens, retired by their owners in favour of new finishes.  In this instance we needed to design the kitchen during construction as we did not have the storage capacity to purchase the recycled parts earlier.  So it was a creative exercise in collaboration with the builder on site.

In this instance the kitchen was sourced including:

1. Main carcass from a local unit being renovated.
2. Supplementary parts from a 2nd kitchen later sourced from the same unit block (note the almost – but not quite – matching door fronts)
3. Raised solid timber bench cut down and reused from a solid timber kitchen bench from another kitchen
4. Splashback feature tiles sourced from samples
5. Cooktop and oven were purchased separately from ebay – again 2nd hand from someone else’s upgrade.  However, they were still good quality brands (eg Ilve)
6. Original blue enamel sink and mixer are from the original kitchen (though the mixer may need replacing as sourcing parts is difficult to stop the drips!)
7. Even the kicks at the base of the kitchen were original (though the kicks may have caused some significant cursing on site)
8. The drawers and runners needed replacing as they had fallen apart – but the drawer fronts were re-used.
9. The dishwasher which made its way with one of the kitchens survived for a while but has since been replaced.