When we viewed our cottage for the first time, I absolutely loved the kitchen- even with its orange pine units, serving hatch and graphic wall tiles (the 1970's had a lot to answer for!). It had a lovely homely feel, partly from the warmth of the 70 year old Aga but also because its a proper cottage kitchen and you can imagine that it has not changed much over the years.
We think that the original part of our cottage dates from the 1700s and would have consisted of two rooms on the ground floor (now the kitchen and dining room) and two rooms above (Harry's room and the smallest bedroom). The kitchen would have had an inglenook fireplace (which now houses the Aga) and the original stairs would have gone up to the first floor from this room (we found their former location when we took the carpet up in Harry's room).
Eventually I would like to have a beautiful traditional painted wooden country kitchen with reclaimed wood worktops and a butler's sink, but in the meantime we decided to give the kitchen a bit of an inexpensive makeover so it looked a bit better and would see us through a few years. I decided to go for quite a pale colour scheme with accents of pastel green, blue and pink. I didn't want anything too dark as the quarry tiled floor is a bit light sapping and the windows are quite small and face north.
We kept the walls white and repainted the old pine doors (the orange varnish was unsandable!) in Farrow and Ball's 'Elephant's Breath'- a nice warm grey. Choosing paint colour for the units was a nightmare as everything we tried looked far too dark or just too modern in the space. Eventually we opted for Farrow and Ball's 'New White' which looks quite cream on the units and 'Mouse's Back' on the shelves which is a kind of greeny/khaki colour. We would have never picked those colours, but you always end up choosing something totally different than planned.
I wanted antique pieces of furniture to enhance the cottage's character (which we are trying to put back) and managed to find a table, four farmhouse chairs and a dresser from an antiques centre in Warwickshire. I painted the base of the table the same colour as the units and the dresser was already painted in Farrow and Ball's 'Bone' which matched really well. I love the rustic wood finish on the chairs so decided not to paint them. I also have a tiny blue vintage stool (complete with chippy paint) which I love and is very useful for helping me to reach the top shelves! Antiques fairs and flea markets are great for finding inexpensive cottage/farmhouse style furniture and its lovely to think that someone owned them before me all those years ago.
I wanted traditional country style curtains (but not quite as full on as the chintzy ones we removed) so opted for Laura Ashley gingham fabric in Heath Green which looks really pretty at the little cottage windows. I already has a pale blue polkadot oilcloth table cloth from our old house which looked great and our big black clock (a wedding present) fitted in perfectly over the table.
I absolutely love vintage style kitcen accessories (I think 'kitchenalia' is the correct term) so really enjoyed sourcing bits and pieces for the shelves and dresser. In fact I have now been banned from buying any more as in all honesty I would never stop (enamelware is a particular weakness!). They are a mixture of genuinely old finds from antique centres and flea markets plus repro stuff mainly found online. I love Emma Bridgewater, Cath Kidston and Susie Watson for crockery, teatowels, aprons etc.. And I had to have a bit of bunting, as it is a cottage after all!
I should probably mention the Aga, as it is the heart of the kitchen. The former owner told us that it dates from the late 1940s and as it still runs on coal it has remained unaltered for 70 years. The fact that this had a fire in it that we needed to keep constantly lit slightly terrified me when we moved in. But its fine once you get used to it and we even manage to clean out the flues (with a 'spoon on a stick' and hot ash vacuum cleaner kindly left by the former resident) without burning ourselves. In an ideal world I would keep the old Aga and have it converted to electric (we don't have oil or gas) but I think it may have to be replaced eventually. And in terms of cooking on it I generally just bung things in and hope for the best and usually everything turns out fine.
If you walk past the Aga and through a low door, this leads out into our boot/utility room, which is an extension of the kitchen really and is used a lot. We think this would have been the old scullery, its a very cold room on the northern side of the cottage (freezing in winter) so its great for keeping things cool as the kitchen gets quite warm from the heat of the Aga. We have not really done much in here as the units can't be improved so we have just repainted the stable door and put up some vintage signs. I would love to have an old sink on a brick plinth in there...maybe one day.
So that's all we are doing to the kitchen at the moment, just a bit of a makeover. I love the result and feel a bit sad that we will have to change it eventually but the units are falling apart and I am not overly keen on the faux marble worktops (made of finest plastic!). One relic of the 1970s that we will keep is the serving hatch, which more than anything is really useful but also gives us open plan living cottage style!
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