Modernisation of rear ground floor of a largely untouched Edwardian house in Knighton, Leicester.
This project improved and updated the kitchen and dining area of a traditional semi-detached Edwardian house in the Knighton conservation area of Leicester, transforming the family living area and linking the house to the garden.
The three storeyed semi-detached house, built in 1902 thus 122 years old, retains many of the lovely original features in the main part of the house including woodwork, fireplaces, the tiled hall and decorative plasterwork. The kitchen-diner had been partially adapted and updated over time.
The last major modernisation was in 1954 when the range cooker was removed from the original kitchen, which then became the breakfast-diner with a Rayburn fire installed. The former scullery became the main kitchen with a free standing gas cooker and other freestanding appliances. It still had a quarry tile floor and brick walls without plaster which had been gloss painted over. Later in the early 1970s a gas boiler and central heating were added.
As part of the work carried out in 1954 a detached garage was built in the garden at the side of the house with a laundry room at the rear, which was accessed across the yard. At the same time the original lean-to outbuildings beyond the scullery were replaced with a concrete flat roofed extension, containing a new outside toilet and a coal store, accessed from a passageway via the rear of the new kitchen.
For a family with three young children it was disappointing there was no view of the garden from either the kitchen or the breakfast-diner.
Our brief was to open up the rear of the house to form a more contemporary kitchen-diner and family living space with views and access to the garden, containing swings and trampolines, and let more light into the house.
The design solution reversed the location of everything, with the pantry nearest the main part of the house becoming a new ground floor WC. The 1950s rear outbuilding with the toilet and stores was removed, the main chimney breast between the original kitchen and the scullery was removed with a new kitchen installed at the opposite end of the extended through space close to the main part of the house. The original built-in cupboard at the side of the main fireplace was re-used at the end of a run of new kitchen units. The rear gable wall was taken out and the beam positioned to be flush with the underside of the ceiling, thus out of sight, lost in the depth of the floor above. Beyond the rear gable wall the high quality extension was built with a roof lantern over the new dining table with a family area at the far end with patio doors leading out onto a garden sitting area.
There are views down the whole length of the space to the garden beyond, which divides into three distinct zones; the kitchen with an island breakfast bar, the dining area and family area. This is a most successful and attractive transformation which more than fulfilled the clients’ brief, harmonising and complementing the rest the house both internally and externally.
