Blog

“Happiness is a small house, with a big kitchen.” – Alfred Hitchcock

We’ve lived in our little terraced house for 16 years now.

I bought it with my Dad’s help during the early stages of my career as a chef, barely earning enough to break even each month.

Throughout this time our humble kitchen has been a true workhorse.

I’ve never relented from extensive experimentation in the kitchen and it always remained the most occupied room of the house, sharing it with lodgers for a large portion of its’ life.

It has been registered twice as a ‘Food Business’ with the local council; both for private catering preparation and two separate food related ‘Start-up’ businesses.

I’ve had many culinary successes in this kitchen and a multitude more failures. I’ve worked myself to ruin, despair and rage within its walls. In many ways I’ve exposed my soul to this kitchen and it’s seen me broken and lost. Yet it remains one of the pillars of my salvation and there is no other place that I feel more at home.

“The kitchen is where we come to understand our past and ourselves.”

A wise cook

We never had much money to invest in the kitchen and so far I’ve never really had any success with any of my ventures. Any love the kitchen ever received was a good regular clean, plenty of energy and a few repaints.

Towards the end of 2019 we knew the kitchen was reaching a critical point. Tiles were cracked, the tap wasn’t right, we only had three working rings on the hob, the wooden worktop was rotting and splitting, the plaster in the walls and ceiling were cracking and some areas were becoming uncleanable.

We’d seen it coming and had slowly been building a pot of money to support a complete overhaul. Extensive research and design ideas began to consume our weekends along with budget planning and quote research.

In September 2020 the big day came and the kitchen project began. We had recruited the skills of our neighbour who was both a builder and a former owner of the property over 20 years ago. I was to be the labourer assisting him with the kitchen metamorphosis.

The infrastructure was completed as we rolled into November and I was left to go it alone with the final fix. The impacts of Covid put a few delays on the final stages and as the target completion date of December loomed we decided to ease up on the finishing touches.

January became the month of true completion when we accomplished the perfect kitchen that the house really deserved.

It’s now a space I am hugely proud of and one in which I have already spent a lot of time. In many ways this kitchen is allowing me to truly commit to Cupboard Challenge by giving me both the environment and the inspiration to create content for the blog. It continues to be my salvation and purpose.

I feel grateful that I’m able to share this space here on Cupboard Challenge.

“Everything happens in the kitchen. Life happens in the kitchen.”

– Andrew Zimmern