In The Press: The Oak Kitchen in Farnham
It never fails to delight seeing a Pluck kitchen in print – a moment for our clients to celebrate the kitchen they have created, that we are of course immensely honoured to have been a part of. These spaces are passion projects, along with all the decisions to be made, financial investment, it is an emotional process renovating your home…but the story of how this kitchen came to be surpasses anything we have heard before, so eloquently told by Ali Lovett, Houses Editor at Ideal Home magazine whose headline is ‘Against all odds…[this] dream kitchen is finally finished’, so are you sitting comfortably…
It could be the storyline for a film, our client the heroine, who ‘against all odds’ overcomes what, by the stretch of anyone’s imagination, is a glut of adversity to relocate her family from abroad and create their new nest.
Explain Ideal Home ‘Having lived in Abu Dhabi for 13 years, it was during lockdown that Karrie [our client] and her family decided to move back to the UK’. Covid restrictions meant they were unable to travel for house viewings so bought their new home without actually having seen it in person. A risk for sure, but they were familiar with Farnham and embraced the renovation ahead – taking on a huge house that ‘had been lived in by an elderly couple for 50 years’. In particular the kitchen needed completely reimagining.
They moved in, adapted to the UK weather and adored being closer to family and friends. The plan for the new kitchen was to demolish the small existing room and “create a new extension linking the old house and outbuildings…opening it all up and using lots of glass and skylights”. But then inflation hit, the renovation quotes tripled, plans were scaled back and they decided “to just do the demolition part to begin with”.
“Then just as that was complete, my husband suffered a traumatic brain injury and was in a coma. Obviously, the next year was a huge worry and he was lucky to survive.”
It goes without saying, the stress at this point was immense. The partly demolished house needed sorting and unsure what their budget would cover in the face of the vastly increased prices, ‘‘in an effort to cut costs, we hired cheap builders. They turned out to be cowboys and, in the end, we had to get all their work redone….Everything that could possibly have gone wrong went wrong.”
“I’d describe Pluck as our saviours during such a nightmare project” says our client. A truly wonderful tribute, but dealing with a traumatic brain injury makes everything else pale to insignificance, as I write this – even mentioning our kitchen design seems flippant. Really we are just in awe of how this family coped with all that was thrown at them and we are delighted to have been part of creating the home that they can enjoy together.
There is more about the design on our Projects page.
