Nobilia kitchen in Hartlepool
A full floor, brought together
The owners had lived here for years, and the ground floor no longer matched how they used it. The kitchen was a decent kitchen — not a failing one — but it was dated, and the rooms did not flow into one another. They wanted somewhere to entertain, somewhere the whole family could be in the same space at the same time, and room for the dog to roam.
So the brief was not really a kitchen. It was four spaces — kitchen, dining, TV area and utility — designed as one floor rather than four rooms that happened to share a house.
A matt black Nobilia kitchen
The kitchen is Nobilia, matt black and handleless, with bronze grip ledges running both vertically and horizontally. The tall units run full height with no cuts, so the wall reads as one plane rather than a stack of boxes.
Two Asko black steel ovens sit alongside a five-in-one microwave oven, a steam oven and a coffee machine, with a tall fridge freezer built into the same run. The sink and hob are both on the island, with the dishwasher beneath — and there is no hood above it, because the extractor is a downdraft set into the worktop.
An island cut from one slab
The island is 3.2 metres — the longest run possible before a slab has to be cut or joined. The worktop is Emil Ceramica White Sienna at 60mm, mitred at the corner: both pieces cut at 45 degrees and closed, so no slab edge shows and the veining carries round the turn.
Above it, three industrial filament pendants. At the sink, a rose copper Quooker with the Cube system — boiling water at 100°C, plus sparkling chilled filtered and chilled filtered from the same tap.
The breakfast bar is Neolith Iron Corten at 90mm, and it is up and over rather than an overhang: it rises from the floor at one end and sits across the top of the island at the other. That gives the room two waterfalls — White Sienna down the island, Iron Corten down the end of the bar.
Dining, with a bar built in
The dining table was made for the room and sits in the window — a separate piece, but cut from the same Iron Corten as the breakfast bar. Two tables, one material, at opposite ends of the floor.
Between them is a built-in bar, in the same dark units and bronze grip ledges, topped in White Sienna to match the island. Mirrored back panels, lit shelves, stemware hung above and a honeycomb wine rack below, with an AEG wine cooler set in. It is the part of the floor that answers the entertaining half of the brief most directly.
The TV area
The Iron Corten returns here a third time, as the media wall — after the breakfast bar and the dining table. That is the whole floor in one idea: two surfaces, each used three times. White Sienna on the kitchen island, the bar and the utility island; Iron Corten on the breakfast bar, the table and this wall. Nothing else is introduced, which is what stops four spaces reading as four unrelated rooms.
Underfoot, Emil Ceramica Unique Bourgogne in 120 × 60, an off-white cream that runs unbroken from the front door through the entire ground floor. That single decision does more for the flow than any other. As Amir puts it: a dark kitchen only works if the floor is light.
A utility that earns its space
The utility uses a different door — a taupe concrete-effect texture — but the same grip ledge detail and the same standard of fit, so it reads as part of the same kitchen rather than an afterthought.
There is a small island in the middle for loading and unloading laundry — topped in the same Emil Ceramica White Sienna as the kitchen island and the bar — plus an Asko washing machine and dryer in stainless steel, a concealed boiler housing, a double open-up pantry and a broom cupboard. The worktop runs up onto the splashback, and a tambour unit hides a pull-out ice machine.
And built into the utility island, at the customer’s request: a dog bed.
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