In 2012, we embarked on a big project: extending our kitchen with a veranda. At the time, I wrote about it in detail on my food blog. But now that I also have a decorating blog, it seemed appropriate to give you a summary here 😊.
Selling your second-hand kitchen
In a previous article, I explained in detail how it is possible to sell your old kitchen on a classified ad site. When the cabinets and doors are of good quality (preferably factory fitted and not in kit form), it is almost impossible to wear out. Be as specific as possible in your ad to avoid unnecessary questions.
Of course, the difficulty is to find a buyer with a similar kitchen configuration. In most cases, a new worktop will be required. But beyond that, almost everything can be reused. These second-hand kitchens are generally bought by DIY enthusiasts who know how to adapt. In our case, the future owners even participated in the dismantling.
For more details, I let you read the original article. You should know that we sold the whole thing for 900 euros, which enabled us to finance the table and 8 chairs for the future kitchen.
Building the veranda
In a second article I showed you step-by-step photos of the construction of the veranda.
We had to redo the terrace, because when a veranda is meant to become a living room, the floor has to be insulated. The project took a year to start (due to a dispute with our neighbour) but in the end, in 4 days, the veranda was up! That’s pretty quick.
We chose a Victorian conservatory (with crow’s feet) in antique grey.
A few years later, when we needed to replenish the coffers, we changed the wooden shutters (green in colour) for aluminium shutters in the same shade of grey. Today, everything matches.
Extending with a veranda
I had a French window in the kitchen, so we turned it into a large opening to the veranda. And as it was a load-bearing wall, we had an IPN installed.
As I explained in a third article, there is a strange moment when the old walls fall down and the new ones are not there yet. With the glass side of the veranda, it almost feels like living outside!
From that moment on, I found myself without a kitchen for two months… well it’s not easy every day! Fortunately, it was summer, and salads and barbecues saved us!
A kitchen twice the size!
Thanks to this work, we went from a 12.5 m² kitchen with 90cm of worktop, to a 29.5 m² kitchen with 360cm of black granite worktop including 110cm of cooking space!
In November that year, I finally got to show off my big beautiful new kitchen 😊. I had earned it!
Unfortunately, I did all this work before I was trained in Feng Shui… As a result, I’m going to have to do a colour scheme! The kitchen is mainly in the North and North East zones. I plan to repaint the purple wall of the dining room/TV area in matt black, and the same for the wall supporting the oven column and the fridge. The wall of the cooking area will be repainted in light grey. For the other walls, I’m still hesitating, I’ll tell you more when the time comes 😊.
Almost 10 years later, I’m still happy with it. The veranda has become a real living room, the one in which we receive our friends (in the living room, we replaced the dining room table with a piano!). It is very pleasant.
I’m really pleased with my granite worktop, which not only looks great but also makes it easier to spread out bread and pie dough.
It was a bit of a heavy and time consuming job but it has definitely added to the cachet of the house, it’s the wow room for anyone who comes to my house for the first time.
