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Even as an award-winning kitchen designer, Julia Brown is not always itching to rip out an old kitchen just to fit a brand new one. That’s why, when looking for her new home six years ago, taking out the existing kitchen was not an immediate priority – that could come later.
‘Whenever my husband and I view houses online – which we regularly do even now while having no intention of moving, such a strange hobby – we get more excited in viewing images of a house [where] the kitchen is falling apart and the ugly wallpaper is peeling, and the carpets are brown and worn. That, to me, is heaven.
“If we had bought something already done up, it would have felt like a wasteful sacrilege to rip it apart just to add our own stamp to it.’
A lot of people throw almost new kitchens and bathrooms out just for the sake of it, says Julia, which, she adds, is such a waste. Their 1900s semi-detached was very dated throughout when they looked at it and the kitchen had done 35 years of service, so could be changed guilt-free.