Farrow and Ball Cornforth White Kitchen part two...

A few more photos of some of the changes we made to our kitchen-apologies if you've already seen some of them!
The first two photos are of my dream oven for the space we had- the 60cm Aga Companion. It's made of cast iron and comes in a wide variety of colours. Perfect if you hanker after the look of a full-size Aga range, but haven't the space.
I would have loved this in black for my little kitchen, but the price is way out of my league. I think it's over £3,000....
So I looked for similar mini-ranges that were in my budget, and found the Mini Gourmet 60cm range by Leisure. Leisure used to be part of the Aga-Rangemaster group until only a few years ago, and you can tell that from the classic styling of their range cookers. It has more or less the same oven functions, plus a handy griddle and swing out cooking tray, and is available in black, cream or red, and in a gas or electric model. It also has similar chunky doors, but best of all, it only cost around £420....
As a joke, in reference to my wanting a real Aga, I bought one of the spare enamel Aga badges on EBay for £7 and put it on the oven to see if my husband would notice. It had two little prongs on the back which fit into holes on the real Aga's door, so I sawed them off with my junior hacksaw and glued a piece of flexible magnet on the back! It worked perfectly- the magnet must be strong!
Well, the funny thing is, we ended up leaving it on and everyone who sees our oven always think it's a real Aga and asks if it was very expensive. It always makes me laugh when I tell them the story. My dad thinks I'm mad though!





Another recent change we made to our kitchen was replacing the top two panels of the original pine door to glass. One of the panels had split and there was an ugly crack going right across it, but the main reason we did it was to introduce more light into the narrow hallway behind it. Victorian hallways can be quite long and gloomy, so now we get a lot more light into it from the kitchen. The two bits of glass only cost about £10 to be cut to size, and then I covered them with one of my favourite finds- etched glass effect window film from Peels of London in Dulwich pattern (£16 for a large sheet). You choose whether you want it to be frosted or non frosted (I always pick frosted as it obscures the left-over mess in the kitchen, whilst still allowing all the light to come through).
It looks more like a scullery door now. Another favourite design is called Crystal which is a Victorian etched star pattern. I have used this all over my house- in my conservatory to obscure the top windows to allow more privacy from overlooking houses, on my front door, the bathroom window-all over my house. It's so easy to cut it and fit, and it looks just like real etched Victorian glass but at a fraction of the price.

You can see the etched star pattern called Crystal in the black and white photo. You can also just see the top windows of the conservatory behind, which I covered in it too. At night, I don't like the thought of being overlooked when eating, so this was the perfect solution. Also it looks pretty, and gave my UPVC conservatory a more vintage look in keeping with the rest of our house.

These are the polished chrome handles we used all from EBay. The pull cup handles were supposedly Mark Wilkinson spares, and they do feel very good quality. They were so cheap too.

We also replaced all the white plastic plug sockets and light switches for polished chrome ones-again very cheap from EBay. You can see the old white ones in the photo below, and in the photo beneath that, the chrome ones.


In fact, most things for our new kitchen came from EBay apart from the wood and paint!
And just to finish off, here's the photo of our kitchen from the Estate Agents brochure before we bought the house. All good quality solid oak, but we fancied something a bit different!
It also just goes to show how influential the blogging world is-after I saw how lovely Joni from Cote de Texas' kitchen looked after she painted it grey, I knew I wanted a grey kitchen too! In the UK the grey kitchen trend has really caught on too now, but quite a while after it did in the Sates. It's interesting how trends can be global isn't it?

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