A narrow, dark galley kitchen opened right up into a bright kitchen-diner that runs the full width of the house and out to the garden.
The brief. The owners had the classic Victorian terrace problem — a cramped galley kitchen cut off from the rest of the ground floor, with a wasted side alley running alongside it. They wanted one open, light-filled space to cook, eat and sit in, with proper access to the garden.
The challenge. Side-returns look simple on a drawing and rarely are. The job sits tight against the party wall, the existing kitchen has to keep working for as long as possible, and the new steelwork has to pick up the load above before anything comes out. The drainage in the old alley had to be re-routed before the slab went down.
How I did it. I read the structural engineer’s steel schedule against the architect’s layout before starting, so the beam sizes, the padstones and the new opening all lined up on site instead of being argued about mid-build. We set the steels, built up, glazed the rear and fitted out — keeping a temporary kitchen running until the last possible week.
The result. A full-width kitchen-diner with bi-fold doors to the garden, level thresholds and a proper flow from front to back — one point of contact the whole way, and the job handed over clean.
“Everything was kept to schedule and prices were competitive.”— Caroline, South Norwood · MyBuilder review
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