An extended kitchen

Cristina and Andrea Rosini updated their small, dark kitchen, turning it into a large, light-filled contemporary space.

The problem

‘Being Italian, both myself and my husband Andrea consider the kitchen to be the heart of the home. When we moved to our terraced house five years ago, however, there was just a tiny kitchen with dated brown units and a faux-marble floor, and very little light.

‘There was a back door out to the garden with a small window next to it, and another window with a view of our next-door neighbour’s brick wall. It was obvious we’d need to do a lot of work to make the space work for us as a family.’

What we did

‘Luckily, we have an architect friend at VJM Design House and he sat down with Andrea to discuss how we could improve the kitchen. Together, they came up with a plan to extend the ground floor, by about 1.5m into the side return, and 3m into the back garden. Initially, we had hopes of building a two-storey extension, to increase the upstairs space as well, but planning permission was refused. So, the extension design was reduced to a single storey and permission was granted within a couple of months.