By Zoe Dare Hall
Can't afford that designer hob? For some, it pays to wait till they can, says Zoe Dare Hall
Whether the warm, noisy hub of the family home or a six-figure work of art designed to impress, the kitchen is where much of our non-working lives are played out. And some people will go to extraordinary lengths to get the kitchen of their dreams.
When Darren Jones, 44, and his wife Sharron, 39, bought their 1970s mock-Georgian house in Colwyn Bay, North Wales, 14 years ago, it was not a pretty sight. "The windows were smashed, the fences kicked in and we hated everything about the interior, but we got it for a good price as it was a repossession and we saw potential in its huge rooms," says Darren, 44, who runs a domiciliary care business.
The kitchen's dimensions of 20x10ft were not enough, however, to house Sharron's vision, a kitchen by the Scottish furniture designer Clive Christian, whose hand-painted cabinets, coving and carvings are favoured by Rod Stewart and Celine Dion and whose Victorian-style opulence harks back to the days when a grand kitchen was a must among high society, even if they never went near it.
There was only one thing for it: to extend the house. "We weren't super-rich and couldn't just click our fingers, so we spent the next 10 years saving up, sacrificing holidays abroad and meals out, and watching the kitchen we had fall apart," says Sharron. "I wanted the world's most exclusive kitchen, something you can't buy off the peg, and a Clive Christian kitchen is something you aspire to. We love the traditional English look of the antique creams and yellows."
A decade later, Sharron's kitchen - a similar version of which would cost around £100,000 - is in place, including limestone floors, granite worktops and the largest island Clive Christian has built.
"We built a single-storey extension to the house, with an indoor heated pool and gym for Darren and a 40x20ft kitchen that is the centre of the house," she says, adding that they have spent more money refurbishing the house than they did on buying it in the first place.
"It's not a show kitchen. This is where we spend 90 per cent of our lives," says Sharron, who has now added Clive Christian bedrooms and a dining room, a full-house renovation that would cost around £250,000, estimates the designer's daughter, Victoria.
"The kitchen is the centre of the house and we do everything there, from having a quiet coffee in peace and watching television to it becoming a hive of activity when our two daughters and three grandchildren visit. We put the babies in their car seats on the island," adds Sharron. "We could have got a much cheaper kitchen that would look almost as good, but this is built to last and we're not planning on moving."
The Jones's weren't alone in waiting years for their kitchen. "We have one client in Cheshire who waited 15 years before she could afford her kitchen, which cost £100,000 in cabinetry alone," says Victoria Christian. "She and her husband totally rebuilt their small manor house in reclaimed stone, to look as it would have done 200 years ago, and waited until she could get exactly the kitchen she wanted."
Peter Shaw was similarly tenacious in getting the pièce de résistance for his restored watermill: a kitchen by the Wiltshire-based designer Mark Wilkinson that cost "well into six figures and took 20 years to get as I had to do it between two wives", says Peter, 60, a retired commercial property surveyor who has spent two decades converting Hazeland Mill in Bremhill, near Chippenham.
"I restored the mill in phases as and when I could afford it and the kitchen was always going to be the final piece," says Peter, who says he needed somewhere with a wow factor because he and his wife, Jennie, do a lot of entertaining.
"We have a green oak conservatory on the Victorian extension to our Cotswold stone mill, and the kitchen is the focal point of our home. It's where we really live," he adds. "It's worth every penny and I don't ever intend to leave this place, so it doesn't matter to me whether I could ever recoup its value on selling the house."
Gary Rhodes and Antony Worrall Thompson, who has seven cookers in his Henley kitchen, have praised the design and functionality of Wilkinson's kitchens, which start at £30,000 and feature in Millgate Homes's new Sundridge Park development in Kent, where apartments in the converted John Nash mansion house and neighbouring new buildings start at £675,000 through Savills. Mark Wilkinson's clients are typically sports stars, Russians and the business elite, says the company's marketing director Richard Moss.
"In our New York showroom we give people the option of whether they want a kitchen in their apartment, as people eat out so often there," says marketing director, Richard Moss. "In England, our clients are either people who absolutely love to cook, or they never cook at all." Welcome to the new Victorians and their status symbol kitchens
No comments:
Post a Comment