The heart of the home

The kitchen is supposed to be the heart of the home, and one day ours will be. At the moment unfortunately we cook outside of one door, have a sink area outside of another, and prepare food in the hallway somewhere in between. It can feel like we spend our days walking in circles, trying to be in 3 places at once, but hopefully not for too much longer. The need to gut our current kitchen exposed itself on the day we moved in and discovered an ant nest in and under the walls. We think they came in on the tree roots and had made a home in part of a rotting beam supporting one of the walls. With wood out, brick supports in and several trench excavations, we think we’ve got rid of them… but then we thought we’d got rid of them a few weeks ago too, so never say never. We also discovered a network of rat tunnels under the rugs and a few old nests complete with mummified past residents. The large sink unit was originally going to stay, but closer inspection revealed it was really rotten inside due to a bit of a bodge plumbing job and so we plan in time to reuse the sink in the outside kitchen. For now we are left with a shell. The mud floor needs digging out a good few inches down to a solid flat level, we then plan to lay a few inches of concrete (I can’t wait for that job) and then bricks, tarted up to give a cobble-stoney effect or something, see what turns out. It would be great to get this done before we leave this time, but we’ll see.