Malvern Living Mar - Apr 2021

FAMILY
FOCUSED
living
As well as shaping our lives and plans, the last year of intermittent
lockdowns has certainly changed the way we need our homes to
function. With kitchen tables shared between home schooling and
home-working, or living spaces packed with exercise kit, many of
us have gotten to know our four walls very well - but found them
falling short in terms of how they work for us...
This was the case with homeowners
Lisa and Phil, who had to put off a more
significant move in March 2020, “we
had had our offer accepted on a period
property that needed lots of work, but
right as we were about to exchange,
our buyers pulled out. In a way, it was a
blessing in disguise, as whilst our house
isn’t our dream home, we were glad to
not have to live in a full-house building
site during lockdown. All this did make us
reconsider our space and how to make it
work better for us in the present.”
With two young children, like many
homes, the kitchen and dining areas
were the heart of the action, “I suppose
our layout was a fairly standard one – a
kitchen looking over the back garden,
then a separate dining room which had
an opening into the sitting room. We also
had a conservatory which was just never
used – it was either very cold or upwards
of 50ºC in the summer months. It just
seemed like a huge waste of space and
created this awkward, multi-door access
to the garden, with about 1,000 trip
hazards for my two-year-old.”
Many of us have spaces like this, which
don’t fit with how we want to live – often
the kitchen is separate and leaves one
family member away from all the action.
The old conservatory (right) transformed
into a modern extension and new
French doors from the kitchen.
“The kitchen had only wall units too and I
really wanted a breakfast bar area where I
could have friends over for coffee but have
eyes on the kids playing at all times too.”
Lisa and Phil wanted to create a ‘broken
plan’ space – that is, an open-plan
kitchen/diner with some seating and
a play area for the kids, then closing
off the sitting room to have more of a
cosy retreat. “Rather than having a full
extension, we found out that we could use
the existing conservatory foundations and
half wall to create a whole new room with
a skylight – then, by removing the existing
wall between the kitchen and dining room,
we could create a large L-shaped space,
with a snug for the kids and a peninsula
- we didn’t have the clearance room for
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