It's just cosmetic - The Kitchen - Part 2

"It's just cosmetic!"  Famous last words.

Rubble from the kitchen walls and ceiling.

When we viewed the property at the start of this project, our intentions were always to close up the side door and move the door to the back of the house, remove the toilet in the utility room and open the utility room and kitchen into one larger space. Simples!! You would think.


It started two weeks ago when the builder started with - "no can do."  The positioning of our back door wasn't possible.  We settled with putting it on the other side at the back of the house where there once was another door.  (You can see this from the mismatched brick work from the outside.) Lovely builder called again. "Mate, there's a problem with the door again; did you know your kitchen floor is on 3 levels." "No, what do you mean?"


Since knocking the walls down, it has become apparent that there are 3 parts to our kitchen and each part sits on a different level.  


As with most Victorian houses, the WC was outside.  Some 50 -70 years ago there was an attempt to bring the WC inside and at this stage it was built on a raised floor level.  In more recent years, a shower has also been added to the space - again - on a different level.  So now we are left with a kitchen on 3 levels.  Since the floor is concrete the easiest option is to level out the floor to the highest level and so the work begins!  We'll add the new floor, to the new ceiling, new walls, new windows and new doors, why not!


But wait.....today's discovering gets even better.  We were called to the site this morning to find our builder shaking his head and pursing his lips.  In the process of stripping the kitchen bare, he discovered that behind the slated ceiling, concealed by tiles is remnants of a chimney breast.  This is kind of expected - as long as it's supported it doesn't cause a problem.  But guess what??  It's not supported.  


In addition to the new floor, new ceiling, new walls, new windows and new doors we now need to have the chimney breast supported with gable brackets and lintels.  Take a look....

The kitchen from the door. To the right is the newly discovered, unsupported chimney breast.

The wall and chimney tiled over.

Unsupported chimney breast and some pipes.

Starting to remove the ceiling.