Update - alabaster painted oak units, oak worktop, (curved end units and worktop corners) belfast sink, 1100 stainless steel rangemaster porcelain large high gloss ivory 600x600 floor tiles, ivory grout - please see attached look book just still to decide on shade of sage on walls - deciding between F&B Mizzle, Vert De Terre, Ball Green and Cooking Apple Green... Also metro sub/way tiles on walls - whether to go for a sage tile or cream/white... The dining room area off the kitchen will have oak parquet floor which will follow through from hall and will also be in the lounge but Im thinking of following the wall colour in the kitchen through to the dining room for continuity and potentially painting the chimney brest or wall furthest away from and facing the kitchen a darker green complementary colour... Thoughts please

I used to work for Aga/Rangemaster and their build quality is very good. You could try their customer service team on 0800 8046261 or 0370 7895107 and they will tell you which is lowest noise generating. In addition, I would recommend that you not only check the decibel levels of the models you are considering from the product specifications, but if you can try and listen to other people's hoods and compare to see if you think you can tolerate them in your space. A difficult process, especially as most kitchen showrooms don't have working models just show pieces. Best of luck.

Hi, I recently designed a kitchen where the range cooker was located in the chimney breast for clients as part of a side return extension, there are a couple of things to look out for: - Is the opening size of the chimney enough for the cooker with tolerance on either side. - The chimney breast will most likely not have an opening height suitable for the height of the cooker so it may need to be raised. Check this dimension and also the clear height that the extractor unit needs to be above an electrical or gas hob. - On raising the opening height the contractor needs to insert a new lintel but we also found the chimney to be completely solid inside and not hollow as we thought so there was no room for the casing of the extractor unit. The contractor basically had to rebuild the chimney breast to suit the requirements for fitting in the extractor unit and having a higher opening which was time consuming and fiddly as we wanted to re-use the Victorian brickwork and have an exposed brick chimney. The end result looked great but I would advise to proceed with caution, it is not as straightforward as it looks or maybe our chimney breast was uniquely challenged. Good luck with your project, I hope this helps.

Thank you all. Apologies I'm not sure how to answer individually. I agree that the skirting board jutting out looks very strange, most rooms in the house have some 'interesting' design choices. Would you believe that the man who made these changes has now set up his own building company! The lamp on the left is from IKEA, I only bought it a few months ago so it should still be available. Unfortunately the lamp on the right is a flea market find so no idea where it came from. The second alcove is substantially smaller than the one with the bookcase currently in it. I'm just concerned that it may look 'unbalanced' with the built in shelves. I haven't managed to find pictures of rooms with alcoves differing in width. I do love the idea of built in shelves, it seems safer than our current bookcase and adding the storage underneath the last shelf would be helpful. I have found an original black cast iron Victorian fireplace with a width of 125cm versus the 140cm of the chimney. Would this work with the green wall? The room is painted in Breakfast Room Green and I've attached a photograph of the fireplace. Thank you for the suggestion about the mirror. This is the first time that the living room has been tidy enough to have the mirror against the chimney breast so it's helpful to have opinions on it's size. Thank you all again!