Stand by for our Studio Kitchen

Golly what a mission... The first design gave way to the second (that's the one below... ££££ phew). Then a third. We sure hope the fourth is the one. At any rate, that's the one we're building.

We moved into a fabulous new building last year. This was fitted out to our specifications - wet fish room, repack room, despatch zone, storage mezzanine, cold store, offices - all except for "the studio kitchen", which we left as an empty room to be completed later. It needed to be a project all by itself. Because we want it to be the wowest place anyone ever cooked fish in.

We're going to use this kitchen for social media and recipe filming and also for customer days. So you can imagine we're dying to get it into use. The original plan: open by Easter. Hmmm.

It has been a very serious trial, but it's finally taking shape. The biggest problem so far has been the extraction. And the ceiling. We decided early that we didn't want an officey kind of suspended ceiling. But it could only be replaced with a whole new solid fireproof ceiling. Way up high, for good camera angles. Fireproof ceilings don't come cheap, especially if you change the design en route...

You see, it collided with the extraction (as in cooking fumes). At first the extraction was going to be down, Bora style. Then a fantastic never-seen-before cooking feature clicked into place. Which had just one downside. It wasn't going to work with Bora. It demanded upwards extraction... via the ceiling void we had just eliminated. That was painful and is still not finally resolved. But I think we see a way out.

Meanwhile, our gorgeous handmade oak units (survivors from the picture above) are all but complete - the workmanship is absolutely fantastic. The appliances are on order. The first fit is done. The walls and plastering should happen next week. And we might soon finalise the extraction. Watch this space.

The plumber's been in eight times so far and the electrician, almost as many.