Old House, New Kitchen

Only the bravest would add a contemporary kitchen to a 400-year-old building. But that’s exactly what Emily and Tim did, and now they’ve got a stunning mix of old and new. 

Emily and Tim’s beautiful house, a 16th Century Cotswold stone townhouse, dripping in history, once played an important part of wool trading in the area. But it needed a complete renovation to make it fit for 21st Century family life. 

Site

Painswick
Gloucestershire

Key features

Wall of cabinets
Functional boot room
Plentiful storage
 

Team

Nigel Wilson
Tom Shield

The kitchen was dark, dingy and mouldy with a mix of old tired 90s cupboards. It was not a huge space, so they needed to utilise every last millimetre of it to make it suitable for a family of five. 

Why did you choose a bespoke kitchen?

One of the main benefits of a bespoke kitchen is that it can be designed and constructed to fit the most awkward of spaces. So, in an older or period home like Emily and Tim’s, with its unique features, interesting nooks and crannies, and its uneven walls, a bespoke kitchen would ensure that every inch of the space was maximised.

Emily knew she wanted her new kitchen to be contemporary, minimal, but functional. But it needed to work within its space, and for that reason it had to be truly bespoke. “If we’d had an off-the-shelf kitchen it would have just looked lost, and it would have been like everyone else’s kitchen.”

Emily did her homework, searching on Pinterest and other sites, collecting pictures and looking at samples until she had a clear idea of the style she wanted. Emily also knew she wanted someone local to create her kitchen. “I was doing a google search and came across an image of a kitchen I liked on Nigel’s website.” They visited Nigel’s workshop and we were convinced that Auspicious was the best one for the job. “Nigel gave me confidence that he could do what we wanted.”

Although Emily admits that she was unsure as to what materials she wanted for her kitchen, when Nigel showed her samples of some of the wood veneers, for a moment she thought she’d got the wrong man. “He convinced me that the wood veneer would work and I’m so glad he did – it looks amazing.” 

“We wanted the continuity you get with working with a small company, and we got that with Nigel – I would have an idea and he’d work with that to create what we wanted.”

“It took 3 or 4 drawings to work out the design – we needed to get so much out of the space. And we just kept going until it worked. I was very involved in the process.” 

“Nigel was very responsive to our requirements. He gave me complete faith, he was lovely to work with, always in good humour. He just worked relentlessly to get it done, but to such immaculate detail.” 

The result

To the left side of the kitchen, the vision was to create a continuous wall of units, and the result is a beautiful expanse of English oak floor-to-ceiling storage cupboards – which also houses the large fridge and the oven – painted in Paint and Paper Library ‘Squid Ink’. At the furthest end, open shelves create a charming feature and a place to store the cookery books.

The rest of the kitchen is made up of English oak base cabinets, with a veneered frontage that highlights the stunning woodgrain. The whole room is beautifully illuminated by the huge skylight added into the raised ceiling, creating a light and airy space.

The couple also wanted bespoke storage in the boot room. Starting with a blank canvas, Nigel created coat storage and a floor-to-ceiling rack for the boots and shoes. “He measured Tim’s large shoes so that they would fit precisely in the storage – this was just the kind of attention to detail that Nigel went to. It’s the little things like that you can’t get off-the-shelf.” 

In the boot room Nigel also built the trap door to the cellar made from English Oak, “It’s very clever, the way it works, and the detail… It’s a beautiful boot room. It shows the effort he took to get it just right.”

Emily and Tim worked hard to create a forever home for them and their children. But for Emily, the kitchen is the icing on the cake. “All those rough sketches turned into this beautiful kitchen – it’s my favourite room in the house. I love spending time in here.”

“Your kitchen is extraordinary…The quality of everything in here is stunning … It is modern and contemporary, but the materials make it feel traditional and historical at the same time.”

 George Clarke, Old House, New Home

If you want to see more of Emily and Tim’s restoration project (and a peak at Nigel hard at work) watch Channel 4’s Old House New Home (Series 6, Episode 1)