New kitchen plans
One room I have always dreamed of having and that is a larger kitchen. It is the one room we always find ourselves congregating into at mealtimes and even parties that we have once or twice a year….OK then, I will be honest! any excuse for a party and we have one, well why not.
A small kitchen can feel very claustrophobic at the best of times let alone when we are all trying to squeeze into a very small room. With us moving house back in November we now have a much smaller kitchen sadly. We did gain an extra bedroom (this is now our office) and a huge living room so we can’t grumble too much. When moving house there are always pros and cons to weigh up isn’t there?
We are now looking at ways we can make our kitchen bigger in size, if not in size then at least make it feel bigger, less claustrophobic and feel more welcoming. Here are a few ideas that we have in mind at the moment.
Our kitchen ideas so far
Colour
We are thinking nice bright and neutral colours for walls and flooring. Colour if chosen right can change the feel of a room and make a room feel much bigger. We can always add warmer colours within the soft furnishings such as towels, blinds etc. When browsing for kitchen tiles this tile caught my eye straight away, they are a stunning sparkly diamond white quartz tile. Perfect for providing any wall or floor with that “WOW” factor. This tile has a stunning mirror fleck, allowing the light to bounce giving a lovely sparkly effect and helping to make a room more welcoming.
Comfort and design
The design and comfort of the kitchen is the most important, we must have a kitchen that works well and everything needed is close to hand. We think we will try and minimize on the number of wall cupboards that we will have, this will help to minimize the claustrophobic feel slightly. Any wall cupboards we do have will be glass fronted to help enhance the spaciousness.
Be realistic
We will be minimizing our kitchen gadgets and be more realistic about what we use and no longer use anymore. I don’t know about you but our cupboards are full of gadgets that we haven’t used in a long time, basically taking up space for no reason. We will also be looking to change some kitchen items, we are going to be looking for more space-saving items, it’s amazing what you can get space-saving wise these days for the smaller kitchen.
Appliances
At our previous property we had integrated appliances when we had a fitted kitchen put in, to us these looked more tidy looking. Of course when we moved these all stayed behind and we currently have freestanding appliances at the moment as we don’t currently have a fitted kitchen at this property. Our personal preference would be to change back to integrated appliances again. We found with having a fitted kitchen we could utilize our space more and use every spare inch possible. At our current property although our kitchen is small we can see lots of wasted space that we could make so much use of when we come to doing our fitted kitchen. Boy do I miss my eye level oven!
Extending the kitchen
We are in discussions at the moment as to whether we could extend our kitchen. We plan on doing this by knocking a wall down that goes between the kitchen and living room, taking a few feet from the lounge and replacing the wall again. By doing this it will not only make the kitchen bigger this will allow for more worktop space, appliances and or base units for storage.
Lighting
With Ian being a fully qualified electrician it does come in very handy when it comes to electrical work around the home. When it comes to the lighting in our home we can never tend to agree on a design. We have always had low ceilings in our properties and we often panic with head height and our boys being rather tall. We have agreed down lights would be our best option and would work rather well. In our kitchen we will also have plinth lighting and under-cupboard lighting too for mood lighting.
We are a little way off yet before our kitchen plans are put into action. We are currently working on floor plans and measurements and then double checking them as we’d hate to make a costly mistake by rushing and getting it wrong. Kitchen plans take time and a lot of careful planning as we found out last time. We are learning from past mistakes.
