We didn’t want an excess of wires and pipes all over the place so my forward thinking and planning I’ve managed to get most of it out of sight.  This hasn’t been easy as I’ve wanted to preserve as much as possible of the old walls and woodwork, every little hole and channel has been carefully considered.  One area that did give me some extra scope was in the kitchen where underneath a layer of plaster board we found some matchboarding.  This had been applied to back of the Georgian panelled dividing wall at some point in the last century (or a bit earlier?).  We could have taken it off to leave the back of the Georgian panelling exposed as it had been some time in the past judging by the paint and later wall paper to give us an extra 1.5 inch in the kitchen. However  this would have meant destroying this bit of evidence from the past and meant all the wiring and plumbing would have to be separately boxed in.   The choice was made to use this small cavity and restore the matchboard.

Hidding the wiring and pipes in the wall, hopefully everything I’l ever need is in there.

Hot and cold  supplies plus central heating pipework, enough sockets for a modern kitchen, extractor switches, switches, lighting, themostat, hydrostat all in.

Another section of the wall where pipes and wiring have been fitted

In the other conner the 15mm central heating splits down to 10mm for tw0 radiators downstairs and one up, the lighting circuits feed in to hall way and up stairs and I’ve even got TV aerial cables in there. This section also gave access so I could stabilise bits of the Georgian panelling from behind.

matchboard wall panneling repaired clearly showing where shelves used to be

Using reclaimed bits of matchboard the wall is but back together with only one new piece that stands a bit proud right in the corner wear space was too tight to fit the pipework without cutting out parts of the framework holding the Georgian panels.

Repaired matchboard wall painted

With a first coat of primer I can see it’ll be wipe-able like it needs to be in small kitchen but still with plenty of the old character showing through.  Its been a while since a did this and the central heating has been working and drying out the timber, it goes to show how much damp we had. The gaps between the matchboards have opened up and will need re-corking hopefully it’ll have stabilised now.