Go Kitchens

Can I extract into a disused Chimney Breast? To all Chimney experts / builders / anyone else in the know how, I am set to buy a house soon and am thinking of designing the kitchen. The current kitchen (in the property to be bought) is miniature. So I will bring down the soft wall separating the kitchen and the dining room to make an open planned kitchen Diner and use the current dining room as the kitchen. The problem I have is there is no external wall in that space where an extractor can go above the cooker. However, there is a disused chimney breast and the gas fire place is still in place. I wanted to block that fire place and brick it up, and have my cabinets on that wall, and then have the extractor on that wall extracting into the chimney breast and out of the house. This is a 2 storey house with the proposed kitchen area on the ground floor directly under what will be the kids bedroom. Finally, there are two fire places downstairs (lounge and diner next to each other) but it merges into one breast upstairs in master bedroom (no fire place there). I will also condemn and brick up the fire place in the lounge. What are my options please? I live in London (UK) and hence would be grateful for any advice specially about building regs that have to be observed in assessing whether my idea is sound and safe. Thanks in advance. Please feel free to email me. Jeff

Should I make home improvements on my town home? I have a town house in southern California. It is 1650 square feet, 3bd/2.5 ba, has a yard and 2 car garage. I want to do some light remodeling: new kitchen cabinets, granite countertops in kitchen and bathrooms, update bathroom tubs, and other things. My whole project will cost about $27,000 for materials. No labor costs. My wife and I plan to remain living in the town home for at least another 5 years because starting a family. We will have our place paid off (& will be debt free) in a few months and may possibly sell it one day if our neighborhood gets bad. But we may never move because real estate is SUPER expensive near the beach where we live. Is $27,000 too much to invest in my town house? My reason for the updates is not for resell but to make our home more custom. I want us to be happy with what we have so we don’t go house poor buying a fancier house. Also, should we save our money for 18 months to pay for the project in full, or should we get a loan?