It is an appealing piece of history. But it will always cause a compromise in terms of space and design to keep it. So think deeply about if you really want to keep it. I live in a 1950s house (and pulled out a similar chimney space) and over the years I’ve moved from wanting to keep absolutely every original feature to realising that modern life has different requirements and the house needs to work for me. It would make a great outdoor pizza oven.

Thanks Malcolm,

That's very helpful advice. And thanks for the photo. It gives me more confidence that the colour scheme of cream, black and white can work for us.

I also take on board bigreader's advice about making the kitchen work for us and not clinging to the past. We still enjoy the warmth and character of the stove in winter, and the slowest of slow simmering temperatures we can get for soups and stews on the cooktop! So we would like to hold onto it for a little while yet...

I wish I could find my pics of my Narrabundah friends’ kitchen. They have exactly that colour and did a big reno knocking out the opposite wall and expanding back out into the garden so the old stove and nook are now at the rear of their open kitchen/living.

They have created a gorgeous mini-garden in the space where you have your modern cooker, with a couple of shelves of cookbooks and lots of plants and it just works! The green looks lovely against the yellow. Their new open plan kitchen is modern country and warm coloured wooden floors. It looks fantastic!

Place it outside in a bbq area, can it be used as a pizza oven type scenario? Or a wood burning heater, adding a 🤧 flu.

If you use and love the slow temperature stews from your wonderful oven, then incorporate it into your new kitchen renovation. As said by Compass kitchens, keep the cream tiles and add white cabinets with your black bench top. For me the thing that stands out are the terracotta floor tiles, to me they are out of place. If you removed these, that is one colour you don’t have to deal with.

I think the grey works on the floor, replace the orange tiles and clean up the cream tiles, new white cabinets, or paint cabinets and install new handles.

This combination may also suit with your grey floors. New cupboards and bench top.

Thanks for these comments. It's a neat idea to take it outside, but not feasible for us, and we do love using it inside in winter. Dreamer's advice about eliminating additional colours is very useful and we'll take that on board too. Hopefully in six months time I will be able to post a picture of it all looking marvellous!

Sorry I didn’t mean take it outside.
It’s inside but towards the very rear of their brand new living space, so doesn’t stand out so much but is still a funky feature with its indoor garden.

Thanks Melt, sorry I misread your post. We actually intend to do something similar to your Narrabundah friend in that we are knocking out the pantry and laundry to double the size of the room and get some light in. So it's good to know that keeping the stove will work in a bigger space.  We have also been wondering what to do with the gap when we remove the upright stove, so a structure with plants and cookbooks sounds sounds  sounds perfect. Thanks, its  good to hear a success story about keeping the old Canberra stove. We've seen a modern renovation that left the stove in a corner of a walk through area where it just looked odd, so integrating it into a country style kitchen is our goal too.