I think it was the furniture’s fault, or more accurately Catering’s attachment issues with inanimate objects (see previous blog posts). We have discussed knocking down the wall between the kitchen and the dining room before, but it was always on the understanding that I would then be able to have the kitchen island I’ve long had a hankering for. The trouble was we couldn’t fit that in without getting rid of the dining table and Catering was adamant that the table had to stay (it was made from recycled Rimu wood, purchased in New Zealand and shipped to the UK when we came back from Asia – it has a history) and so we had reached something of a Mexican stand-off.

Move on several years (possibly a decade) and Catering came up with a cunning plan to move the dining table from the dining room to the far end of the sitting room. Historically we used to sit at the dining room table every evening with the boys for dinner (I say we, but it was largely Catering, as I was then still commuting to London and so missed this delightful family scene) but as they got older and were in less and less for dinner, use of the dining table became more of a Sunday lunch and special occasions exercise. It meant we had a room we barely used, other than to walk through it on the way to the sitting room and the rest of the house.

I have already discussed our lovely Balinese day bed in a previous blog. It was rarely used and occupied approximately a third of the sitting room, meaning we had two significant areas in the house that we barely used. That has all changed, the dining room table is now sitting happily where the Balinese day bed used to stand and thanks to the wonders of eBay the Balinese day bed has a new home somewhere in the Midlands.

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So now we could press on with the kitchen project.