Kitchens

We had like a kitchen, we did everything in there. I was thinking the other day, where was our TV, because when we had our first TV I was about 8 or 9, and it was a little tiny screen and a great big TV. We had a big upright table with carved legs, and the TV would be at the back of this table, and we’d sit round that for our tea, but we had a couple of fireside chairs, you know, armchairs in there, and that would be where everybody sat.

Sylvia, Keith Road

I’m sure everybody says the same thing, but the kitchen is absolutely miniscule, and when I moved in there wasn’t even, there were only two cupboards in there, so I’ve had to add a lot of work surfaces and cupboards to it, and it’s still… I can’t really cook a full meal in there, you know if I’m cooking I have to put things on the floor and balance them on the bin, because there just isn’t any space. But that’s ok, I’m not a domestic goddess by any stretch of the imagination, so that’s ok, I much prefer baking cakes to cooking dinner.

Jennie, Thorpe Crescent

The kitchens are quite small, but it is big enough to get a small table in and I produce quite a variety of cooking in there, from pies and cakes to biscuits and all sorts, so it is big enough to do quite an elaborate amount of work in. Given that they are smaller, you have to have the sort of canal boat mentality, of knowing how to package and put things away, putting up shelves wherever you can and utilising your storage carefully, to make sure you get everything you want in.

I look out of the window and I see my next door neighbour’s kitchen window, which has got a half pearlised window on it, so I can’t see them properly, I can just see them in vague outline, apart from when they poke their heads up over the top to see what I’m doing, and then they notice me looking at them seeing what they’re doing.

Martin, Lloyd Road

It was one in one out, like a nightclub, you couldn’t walk past each other in the width of the kitchen. This wall that we took down, we knew it was going to be a structural wall, we had to do all the paperwork and get engineers, and so on. Then when we took it apart we realised that the main water supply was up inside this wall so we had to reroute the main water, and it ended up being one problem after another, because we’d never really done this kind of building work before, so we thought yeah, we’ll just knock a wall down, knock it through, that’s what everyone says when they move in, but we had no idea that it was going to be quite as complicated as it was. Because not only is it the water supply for our flat, it’s the water supply for the other flats as well, so we had a whole load of problems trying to speak to the other people and explain what we were doing, and they finally agreed, and then we could finish doing the work, because we’d half knocked down the wall and these pipes were here and we couldn’t cut the pipes because there was pressurised water in there for everybody. It was the point of you had to keep on going, you couldn’t just put the wall back up again, because you know we’d made all this effort to take the wall away, and putting a steel beam in and things like that to support the roof.

Duncan, Brettenham Road

It’s my favourite room of the house. It’s the room I spend the most time in. It’s got these really beautiful tiled floors, yellow and blue tiled floors. It’s all open shelves, there’s no cupboards, apart from under the work surfaces. I like it, it feels very busy, I don’t ever feel like it’s too much, or too cluttered.. I just like it, it’s nice and bright, we’ve got spotlights

Daisy, Theydon Street