Having wittered on so far about the value of repairing and preserving as much as possible, we had to take a sharp departure from this philosophy when dealing with the kitchen and garage. These were two pretty poor quality structures in pretty poor condition and even if I were able to restore them, they would remain structures that no longer fulfilled their purpose in modern life.  Most notably, the kitchen was small and separate from the main house, so whoever was cooking (usually me) was banished to a separate room to work on their own.  Maybe this was ok 150 years ago when it was the duty of your ‘maid of all works’, but that’s not how we live now and I for one, as the principle chef in this house, did not like this way of cooking.  Kitchens are now commonly considered to be the heart of the home but there was no way the lean-to structure housing this kitchen could be turned into anything like that and as such, it was risking the long-term future of the whole building.  If a historic house can continue to be used as a home which meets the living standards of the current time, it is more likely to be inhabited and maintained.  You’d have to look hard nowadays to find a family home with no indoor toilet for example. Therefore, we felt that by sacrificing these two poor quality structures and building a good quality contemporary kitchen space that would fulfil current day and future lifestyle expectations, this would be best for the building in the long term.  The conservation officer agreed and once he approved our plan for a new extension, I got busy with the sledgehammer…

I tried to keep as much of the material as I could to reuse later: bricks and floor slabs for garden landscaping and joists for furniture making. I still ended up filling three skips though.  Have you ever wondered how they manage to take a full skip and replace it with an empty one in exactly the same spot? I thought it would require two different lorries until I saw it in action. Ingenious!