Any aspiring kitchen designers out there?

MIghtyG

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Will soon be extending cassa de MightyG and as part of the extension we are knocking together our small kitchen and dining room to make a slightly larger kitchen but me and the misses are struggling to agree on a layout for the kitchen and wondering if anyone has some ideas we can steal? :)

This is the room we are dealing with:

kitchen.JPG


Top left blue box is patio doors out onto our decking, top right blue box is a window overlooking the back garden and the sink is currently just infront of the window. Far right is a door into the utility room. Bottom right is the door into the new extension which will be our living room/dining room. Bottom left is a small boxed in something - either sewage water pipe or a beam (should be 100x100!)

We are maybe trying to cram too much in but we are trying to get:

1. Full size dishwasher - we currently only have a half size and its no where near big enough.
2. American style fridge freezer - we could live with a standard size one but we would loooove to have a water/ice dispenser in the kitchen.
3. Small seating area for breakfast for 2-3 people - nothing massive, but big enough for a plate of toast and a few bowls of cereal
4. Eye level oven - maybe even a double oven/grill

Any ideas for a layout? We are pretty set on the style/colours we want to use but cant figure out how to get everything that we want into the room without making it feel cramped..

At the moment we have:

current kitchen.JPG


And it feels like we have zero worktop/storage space for pots/pans and so on. The worktop above the dishwasher (DW) is for the kettle/toaster (which barely fit as it is) and the left of the cooker is knives/utensils etc. so we can only really use the space to the right of the cooker.

By expanding into the dining room we are trying to squeeze in some larger appliances and getting some better worktop space.

Any ideas on how to make it all work? :)
 
Just a few suggestions:

The right-hand wall is going to be difficult to use much because of the access to the living/dining-room. I suggest you put the fridge-freezer on that wall, against the utility door. You could put high-level top cupboards along there, too.

To save space at floor level, think about putting wall units on the floor, under a shallow worktop. We have done that on one wall in our new kitchen, and it works very well.

I do recommend an American-style F-F. I insisted on it as a condition for having it done in the first place, and we absolutely love it. They hold a lot more than you'd think, too.

Some other considerations:
  • You can't have too much storage space;
  • You can't have too many power sockets;
  • Put in a couple of power sockets with combined USB. They are very useful for charging phones or running tablets, etc
  • A small TV on a bracket is a good idea;
  • Deep storage drawers work well;
  • Don't be tempted by single-use cupboards or drawers, such as recycling tidies or pop-up mixer tables;
  • Think about more than one lighting zone
 
You've got a chunk of space all along the left hand wall & bottom wall now so I would use all of that for cabinets. Keep sink where it is with cabinets either side from the patio doors to the utility, and then a high corner seating 'L' behind the entry door (so everyone would be facing the sink). You may even be able to get a small island where you currently keep utensils, towards the current dining room.
 
^ The island could also have a sliding top to double as a breakfast area. Lets you make the island and storage space larger. Under the sliding top can also be sink or hobs.

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Or even some kind of pull out table.

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Just a few suggestions:

The right-hand wall is going to be difficult to use much because of the access to the living/dining-room. I suggest you put the fridge-freezer on that wall, against the utility door. You could put high-level top cupboards along there, too.

Not doable sadly, there are no other access routes to the utility room, Since its a pretty useless wall we had been planning on just sticking a radiator there.

To save space at floor level, think about putting wall units on the floor, under a shallow worktop. We have done that on one wall in our new kitchen, and it works very well.

I have never seen this being done before, would you have any pics you could share?

^ The island could also have a sliding top to double as a breakfast area.

Really like the look of this, I just dont know if we have the space for an island, I would love one but I cant think how to squeeze one in.

It may look like we are getting a "huge" kitchen knocking the dining room and existing kitchen together but in reality we are moving from a tiny kitchen to a small/medium sized kitchen. Spoke to a kitchen place to get an idea of pricing and started talking about how much work we are doing knocking rooms together etc. doubling the size of the kitchen and you could see pound signs in her eyes, then we gave her the ball park dimensions of the room "......what you will have is what we would call a medium-ish kitchen...."

Anyway, spoke to some other folk who are better at this than me and they have came up with the attached:
kitchen.JPG


Door on the bottom right would be the entrance to the kitchen, immediately to the left of this door (in the empty space) would be the American style fridge/freezer and to the left of that the raised height oven.

im worried we are losing out on storage space with this design above so we were thinking about adding cupboards to the right of the window and where they have the utensil storage. DPinBucks idea of wall units at floor level sounds really good though, may have enough space to squeeze them in along the left wall for extra storage aaand a little extra worktop space, can never have too much worktop space! :)
 
Can you do open plan into the extension rather than a door?

Then you can have an island (with informal bar seat dining) plus much needed extra storage space. Would also add value to your home as everyone likes open plan kitchen.
 
...I have never seen this being done before, would you have any pics you could share?...
OK: I hope these give some idea.


This one shows the work-in-progress. The area is too narrow for floor units on both sides, so the units on the right, and round the corner into the dining area, are standard-depth wall units. That is, except the far back corner unit, which is a floor cupboard cut back because they didn't do a suitable wall unit.

Pic1.jpg


You can see that the units are on standard base feet, and in our case don't go all the way back to the wall, but that's just to fill it out as much as possible. I think they are mounted on a false wall, but maybe not as the worktops give enough rigidity. We didn't bother making the interiors larger as that would have added unnecessary cost, so the units inside are standard depth. As it was, there was no extra cost; the fitters took it all in stride.

These are (not very good) pictures of the finished area:

Pic3.jpg



Pic4.jpg


By the way, that Franke tap is brilliant.
 
As an aside, on the same idea, kitchen wall units make good bathroom units They are usually rather cheaper than special bathroom ones, and there is much better choice.
 
can never have too much worktop space! :)

Agreed. :)

+ cupboard space.

With that in mind I would consider....

Wall cupboard right of window.
Wall cupboards between Window and Patio doors.
Breakfast bar coming out at a right angle, I think the angle in the drawing seems to take up too much room. Plus a cupboard below the breakfast bar, facing out to the left wall.
Left wall - worktop, cupboards top and bottom along that wall. With a corner cupboard at the bottom left.
More sockets!
 
I wouldn't put an oven next to fridge, and if you have an eye-level oven, think about where you can place items before/after they've been in the oven. You need worktop in that vicinity.

Same with high microwaves, most of the stuff you take out is so hot you need to quickly place it somewhere.

I wanted big changes with our kitchen but with 3 doorways, a window, and a fairly narrow room, our plans are not that different from what we already have.

You left hand wall is a perfect place for cabinets, don't waste it. And they can be full depth too, just do take them right up to the patio doors if it's too narrow. An angle worktop overhang can tapper it in from the last cabinet to the patio door edge
 

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